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REPORT 



PROPOSITION TO MODIFY 



PLAN OF OSTPiUCTION 



UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, 



MADE TO THE 



I'amltjj ai tlje EniljeoitiJ, 



Read before the Faculty, Sept. 21, and before the Board of Trusteesj 

Sept. 26, 1854. 



NEW YORK: 

D. APPLETON & CO., 346 and 348 BROADWAY. 

185 5. 



Baker, Godwin & Co., Pkinters, 
No. 1 Spruce St., 
New York. 



PREFATORY. 



At a meeting of tlie Faculty of the University of Alabama, held on 
Friday, the 14th day of July, 1854, the following paper was read by the 
President : — 

The President of the Board, and the Trustees now present, are unanimously 
in favor of modifying the present system of instruction in the University of 
Alabama, and respectfully request the Faculty of the University to report to an 
adjourned meeting of the Board, on Monday, the 25th of September next, the 
plan and details for the initiation and continuance of a system, conforming, as 
near as our circumstances will allow, to the arrangements in the University of 
Virginia. 

John A. Winston. 

Wm. H. Forney. 

John N. Malone. 

Ed. Baptist. 

H. W. Collier. 
University of Ala., July 12, 185-i. 

This paper was referred to a committee appointed by the President, 
consisting of Professors F. A. P. Barnard, John W. Pratt, and George 
Benagh ; which committee was instructed to report to the Faculty at an 
adjourned meeting, to be held on Monday, the 18th of September. On 
that day the Faculty accordingly re-assembled ; but adjourned without 
transacting business, in consequence of the absence of the President. 
At a called meeting, on Thursday, the 21st, the committee reported in 
explicit compliance with the terms of the request of the Board of Trus- 
tees ; and the report which follows, was subsequently presented by Pro- 
fessor Barnard, on behalf of himself and Professor Pratt, of the majority. 
It was ordered by the Faculty, at a subsequent meeting, that this docu- 
ment should be communicated to the Board of Trustees. The report was 
accordingly read before that body, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the 26th 
and 2'7th of September. The deliberations of the Board resulted, how- 
ever, in the adoption neither of the plan originally suggested in the 
paper above given, nor of that recommended in this report ; but of one 



•1 PKEFATORT. 

wlucli mny perhaps be regarded as an experiment substantially new ; con- 
servative, in the main, of the features of the existing college system, but 
providing opportunity for such departures fi'om it, in particular cases, as 
the judgment of the Faculty shall approve. The nature of this plan 
may be more particularly gathered from the following ordinance : — 

1. That the studies now pursued in the University, the extent to which they 
are carried, and the number of recitations heard by each officer, shall remain as 
nt present established, as near as may be. 

2. Tliat twelve recitations shall be heard upon each day of the week, except 
Sunday. The Faculty may, in their discretion, reduce the number of recitations 
upon Saturdny, so that there be not less than four upon that day. 

3. Tliat the recitations of each day shall be assigned by the Faculty to the 
different hours in such a manner that a student, by taking three recitations per 
day, may accomjilish all the studies taught in the University in four years. In 
doing this, the recitations of the Professor of Ancient Languages, the Tutor of 
Ancient Languages, and the Professor of Modern Languages, may be assigned to 
the same hours; 'so, also, those of the Professors of Mixed Mathematics and Pure 
Mathematics ; also, those of the Professors of Chemistry and Geology. All other 
recitations must be assigned to hours at which no others are held. 

4. Each student under the age of twenty-one years, desiring to select a par- 
ticular study, shall be required to produce from his parent or guardian, if he 
has one, a written declaration of the special object of the applicant in coming to 
the University ; and the Faculty shall then jircscribe for him the course of study 
which will accomplish his object in the shortest time and in the best manner, 
liaving regard to the next two provisions. 

5. Every student must have three recitations a day, as near as may be. 

6. A student shall not enter upon the study he maj' select, until he has passed 
such an examination as will satisfy the Faculty that he may, by proper applica- 
tion, prosecute it successfully. 

7. Upon a student's eomjaleting, and standing an approved examination upon, 
all the studies in any department, he shall receive the degree of graduate in that 
department, and a certificate bearing the seal of the University, and delivered at 
commencement, in the usual mode. 

8. The degree of Bachelor of Arts shall be conferred upon a student only 
after he shall have passed approved examinations upon all the studies taught in 
the University, 

9. Honorary degrees shall not be conferred by tliis University, except by a 
unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees. 

10. All laws or ordinances, or jiarts of the same, now existing, which conflict 
with the foregoing ordinance, are hereby repealed. 



REPORT. 



The undersigned, a majority of the Committee ap- 
pointed by tlie Faculty of the University of Alabama, 
to consider and report on a request emanating from 
certain members of the Board of Trustees, in regard to 
a re organization of the plan of instruction in the Uni- 
versity, having consented to unite with the minority in 
a literal compliance with the request alluded to, and 
having discharged that duty, beg leave respectfully to 
present certain distinct views of their own, having a 
bearing on the general question raised by the proposi- 
tion referred to them, and also on the considerations out 
of which, as they have reason to believe, this proposition 
has grown. 

Change, it is hardly necessary to say, will never be 
sought for its own sake. Whenever and wherever there 
arises a steady and earnest demand for a new order of 
things in regard to matters which deeply concern man- 
kind, whether they be affairs of state or systems of 
education, it is obvious, from the very nature of the 
interests involved, that the degree to which this demand 
is real and sincere, must be matter of easy ascertain- 



RETORT. 



ment. And wlieii, to a majority of the community, the 
existence of a general feeling of dissatisfaction with the 
actual state of things is entirely unsuspected and imper- 
ceptil)le, it may well be questioned whether the impres- 
sions of a few, however decided, can be wisely accepted 
as of more weight in evidence than the tranquil content- 
ment of nearly all beside. 

It is by no means the belief of the undersigned, that 
those members of the Board whose names are appended 
to the request, which has led to the appointment of this 
Committee, are all of them, by previous conviction, in 
favor of the introduction into this University of the 
system of which they ask for the details. It is quite 
sufficient to suppose that the request was dictated by a 
desire, on the one hand, to know explicitly and defi- 
nitely what it is which it is proposed to substitute here, 
in place of a system that, if not the best, has, neverthe- 
less, the sanction of some centuries of experiment, and 
the present support of the general suffrage; and an 
equal desire, on the other, to satisfy the outside advo- 
cates of change, that the Board are always willing to 
examine any project for the improvement of the Uni- 
versity, which, in the view of any friend of the cause 
of education, may deserve their deliberate attention. 
Those members of the Board to whom this inquiry is 
owing, are therefore regarded by the undersigned as 
occupying, equally with their colleagues, the attitude of 
judges, whose opinions are jet to be expressed, and not 
that of partizans, who are waiting only to act upon a 
judgment already formed. 



REPORT. 



The friends of the University, whose suggestions to 
the members of the Board have probably occasioned 
the present inquiry, appear to have been laboring under 
some impressions which a candid examination of facts 
cannot fail to dispel. These are — 

1st. That the actual state of the University is not 
prosperous ; 

2d. That the number of students is smaller than is 
usual in colleges of equal standing in years ; 

3d. That there really exists an outside demand for 
a radical re-organization of the University, powerful 
enough, if resisted, to sweep down opposition before 

it; ■ . 

4th. That neither the Trustees nor the Faculty 
have heretofore given thought to the possibility of 
introducing improvement into the institution ; but that 
both bodies have manifested indifference to the spirit of 
progress which characterizes the age. 

In speaking of the prosperity of an institution of 
learning, the general public seem to regard but a single 
criterion — -that of the number of students it attracts, or 
succeeds in retaining. But this is a test which serves 
very ill to enable us to judge either of the value of the 
institution as a part of the educational machinery of the 
State, or of the esteem in which it is held by the sur- 
rounding people. It is perfectly well known to the 
undersigned, that many who would be students of the 
University are prevented from being so now, not 
because of any objection to the course of study here 



REPORT. 



prescribed, but because of what they please to consider 
the too great severity of the tests imposed to secure a 
certain respectable degree of scholarship and attain- 
ment. Could the Faculty be induced to think it wise 
to permit a material degradation of the standard of 
scholarship insisted on in this University, there can be 
no doubt that, without any other change whatever, an 
immediate and large increase of numbers might be 
realized. It is often charged that this Faculty is more 
severe in its exactions than that of any other college in 
the Southwestern States. Upon such an assertion it is 
not for the undersigned to express any opinion. The 
Faculty of the University of Alabama have acted with- 
out reference to what may or may not be demanded 
elsewhere. They have aimed but at the single object 
of making this institution one in which scholars may be 
formed worthy to be compared with those who issue 
from the celebrated and time-honored Universities of 
the older States. "Whether in this they have succeeded 
or not, there can be no doubt, since it is matter of 
pretty frequent complaint, that they have set up here 
what is generally regarded as a high standard of schol- 
arship. They have secured to the University of 
Alabama the respect of the surrounding community, 
and that of sister institutions throughout the country. 
To say that, in regard to the great ultimate ends for 
which colleges are instituted, there has been any faihire 
here, or that there exists a want of a prosperity of the 
noblest kind, is at once unreasonable and absurd. 



REPORT. 



But in regard to tlie point of numbers. There is 
not, we must admit, a large number of students in this 
University, if we compare catalogues with Harvard or 
Yale, or even with the State institutions of North and 
South Carolina. But Harvard and Yale have several 
thousand living alumni; and the two last-mentioned 
colleges have several hundred — perhaps not less than a 
thousand — each. All of these old institutions are, or 
have been, the direct beneficiaries of the States to 
which they belong, or of many of their wealthy 
citizens ; and they thus secure that interest and those 
sympathies from the surrounding communities, which 
all men bestow upon the objects they have befriended 
and cherished. The adult population of Alabama is 
yet mainly immigrant ; the affections of the fathers of 
our youth still cling around the homes of their child- 
hood, and their spirits still do homage at those shrines 
of learning, where they themselves, perhaps, were first 
imbued with the love of letters. In addition to this, 
there are growing up in this State, as in every other, 
institutions endowed and patronized by particular 
religious denominations ; which cannot fail, even though 
they should offer advantages for mere intellectual ci^l- 
ture much inferior to those which the University pre- 
sents, to draw around them many who would otherwise 
swell our numbers. Nor has this institution yet a hold 
on the feeling of State pride, such as so powerfully 
sustains the State Universities of the two Carolinas and 
of Virginia. The population itself is too heterogeneous, 



10 REPORT. 

and too newly thrown together, to heave learned even 
to recognize the feeling ; and this feeling, so far as it is 
represented at all, is at present but humbly represented 
by a sort of sentiment of common interest. All these 
considerations are unfavorable to the growth of an insti- 
tution erected in the midst of a people like this, by 
funds not contributed by themselves, interesting them 
by no associations connected with the past, and allying 
itself with no sympathies of theirs which may be linked 
with the present, or may extend to the future. 

Under circumstances like these, ought it not to be 
a great thing, if the University is able to command 
from Alabama an attendance as large, in proportion to 
population, as the University of Virginia commands 
from the people of Virginia? The name of the Sage 
of Monticello ous^ht itself alone to be a sufficient 
guaranty for a host of youthful devotees at the altar 
which he reared to learning. The tone of exultant 
pride, in which every Virginian alludes to this endur- 
ing monument of the wisdom of Jefferson, would seem 
to indicate that no other institution could have a 
charm like this, to fill the imagination of a native of 
the Old Dominion. And, to leave speculation aside, 
it is in fact universally admitted, that the University 
of Virginia is a flourishing and prosperous institution. 
Now, in comparing that University with ours, in regard 
to numbers, we must manifestly reject from both cata- 
logues all students from beyond the limits of t]je 
respective States. We must remember how many of 



REPORT. 11 

the sons of Virginia have emigrated South and West ; 
we must remember what attractive associations cluster 
around the name of the patriot founder ; we must bear 
in mind how easily, by means of the immense railway 
system of the Atlantic States, students even from our 
own borders may reach the Virginia University, more 
quickly and more agreeably than they can our own. 
Of this species of advantages we have not one. Hence 
we confine the comparison strictly to the numbers fur- 
nished by the respective States in which the Universi- 
ties are situated, alone. 

The catalogue of the University of Virginia, last 
published (for 1853-54), shows a total, of students 
belonging to Virginia, of 289. But, as a considerable 
number of these are students of law and medicine, 
they certainly, in a comparison like this, are not to be 
counted. By a careful enumeration, it appears that 
the number of these professional students belonging to 
Virginia is 126. The students in the Department of 
Arts are therefore only 163. According to the United 
States Census for 1850, the total white population of 
Virginia was, in that year, 894,800. The same authority 
gives the total white population of Alabama, at the 
same time, as 426,514. According to these figures, if 
the University of Virginia is prosperous while the 
State furnishes it one hundred and sixty-three students 
of Arts, ours ought to be equally so, so long as we 
have as many as seventy-seven. But the catalogue of 
the University of Alabama, published last November, 



12 REPORT. 

coutaius tlie names of ninety-eiglit students of Arts 
from Alabama ; and, if we add those who were admitted 
after the publication of the catalogue, we shall have 
one hundred and seven. Is there any ground, then, for 
asserting that our numbers are feeble; or that Ala- 
bama does not patronize her own University as well as 
other States do theirs ? Should the assertion be still 
adhered to, it can be established only by comparison 
with some State institution in which the close, instead 
of the open, system of instruction is maintained ; and 
hence the whole inference, which it has been sought to 
derive from this fact, will fall to the ground. 

In truth, the comparison just made is most disas- 
trous to the claims of the Virginia system, as it respects 
its actual popularity. For, be it observed, a main 
reason why we are urged to adopt that system is, that 
the existing one is so hopelessly unpopular as to render 
some destructive outbreak in the legislature, or among 
the people, all but absolutely inevitable. Yet, unpop- 
ular as it is (if these assumptions are true), it is mani- 
festly, as the figures themselves show, nearly fifty per 
cent, more popular in Alabama, than the system of the 
Virginia University is in Virginia. 

Upon the question of success as tested by numbers? 
these remarks may, perhaps, be esteemed sufficient. 
Yet there are one or two passages relating to this 
point, in the report made to the Board of Trustees 
of this University at their session in July, 1852, by the 
President of the University, so forcible and conclusive. 



REPORT. 13 

that, as tliey are brief, the undersigned cannot refrain 
from here reproducing them. 

"Numbers," says Dr. Manly, "in an institution 
depend upon its age and history, its position, the charac- 
ter and personal influence of its officers — especially of 
its graduates — the circumstances and character of the 
communities surrounding it, and upon facts and rela- 
tionships so various that the question of organization is 
left comparatively a very small influenced And again : • 

" In the earlier periods of its history, numbers have 
not constituted a conspicuous feature in any college. 
The first half-century, even, of the oldest and most 
popular of them, would not present an average of num- 
bers disparaging to our own, in the short period reck- 
oned by the University of Alabama. In Harvard, 
from 1806 to 1810 inclusive, a period of five years not 
unfavorable for the comparison, and when the college 
Avas 170 years old, the average number of undergrad- 
uates was 211." Once more: — 

" Compared with other colleges, however, this Uni- 
versity has its fair average. Of 121 colleges in the 
United States, reported in the American Almanac of 
1850, 78 have fewer than were our numbers of that 
year, and only 38 had more. * * * In a document 
presented to the Board of Education in the city of New 
York, 1851, of 53 colleges (comprising the older, the 
endowed and popular institutions in the United States), 
26 had more and 26 had fewer than our numbers of 
that year." 



14 K E r K T . 

To these extracts may be added the following, from 
a letter addressed, by the Faculty of this University, 
to Hon. W. K. Baylor, chairman of the Committee on 
Education of the Senate of Alabama, in January, 1843: 
"No college in the United States," say the Faculty, 
" ever yet went into operation, which, in the years of its 
infancy, was not as limited in this respect as the Uni- 
versity of Alabama. Many have been much more so. 
For fifty years from its foundation, the University of 
Harvard graduated, annually, on an average, fewer 
than seven individuals. For twenty years the average 
number of graduates at Yale college was about five. 
A young college, in a newly settled country, will 
never, in its infancy, be numerously attended. The 
demand for a high order of. education among the peo- 
ple is neither great nor general. * * * If such a 
college prepare, every year, but a few men to instruct 
others, the immediate fruit of its operations may seem 
indeed to be small ; but through those same men it is 
still to operate through a long series of years, and to 
carry the benefits of knowledge to hundreds and thou- 
sands. * * '' How are the people ever to be made 
ripe for learned institutions, but by first preparing the 
teachers who are to diffuse among them the elements 
of knowledge ? The streams which flow into the ocean 
are fed by the evaporation of the ocean itself. And 
the students who throng the halls of colleges, are 
brought there by the learning which, silently as the 
vapor rises from the sea, these colleges have scattered 



K E P O K T . 15 

tbroue:!! tlie land." And further: "Great numbers 
constitute, in general, the most trifling and shadowy and 
insignificant evidence of excellence in a school, which 
can be adduced. And if a seminary is young, and is 
situated in a new country, and nominally exacts some 
slight intellectual training as a condition of member- 
ship; great numbers, suddenly collected, furnish a very 
ominous indication as to the fidelity of its adminis- 
tration." 

But it has been affirmed, and it is so still, with 
great positiveness and emphasis, that there exists exten- 
sively, among the people of Alabama, a feeling of dis- 
satisfaction with the plan of instruction pursued in this 
University, and a disposition to originate measures 
which shall result in forcing, should not the Board con- 
ciliate it by yielding, a change. 

That there may exist a general and somewhat vague 
desire for the introduction of some improvements upon 
the present system, the undersigned are not disposed to 
deny. They are the less so, because of the fact, well 
known to them, that a similar feeling has long existed 
among the members, both of the Board and of the Fac- 
ulty themselves. It, has been felt that the present 
course of study is too greatly burthened ; and that the 
Univei'sity of Alabama, in common with most or all of 
the colleges of the country, has gone on increasing the 
amount of its exactions from its students, until of the 
two evils — superficial teaching on the one hand, and 
overtasking the strength on the* other — one or the 



IG REPORT. 

otlier seems almost unavoidable, and botli are not 
unfreqiiently more or less experienced. That some 
improvement ouglit to be made here, the undersigned 
will not undertake to dispute. Of what precise nature 
or form the change ought to be, they propose to con- 
sider in the j)roper place. Every college which pro- 
poses to carry its students through a definite course in 
each distinct department — the University of Virginia 
as well as the University of Alabama — must be yet 
compelled, by force of circumstances, to look into and 
to correct the evil which here undoubtedly exists. The 
best manner of attempting to do this, has been subject 
of discussion between one or both of the undersigned 
and members of the Board of Trustees, at various 
times, for years ; and plans have been actually drawn 
up by them and committed to paper. The difficulty 
and delicacy of the undertaking, and a natural unwil- 
lingness to press views which, while generally ap- 
proved, might have failed to carry conviction in all 
their details, has hitherto prevented these discussions 
from leading to any important practical result. 

But while the undersigned fully recognize the exist- 
ence of a general desire for the improvement of the 
system of instruction which actually exists in this Uni- 
versity, as having long partaken of that desire them- 
selves, they by no means admit that there has yet 
appeared any evidence of a wish or design, on the part 
of the people, to subvert the system itself, and to erect 
upon its ruins, a fabfic of so loose construction, and so 



K E P O R T . 17 

doubtful a character, as that of the University of 
Virginia. If any such disposition has appeared in any 
quarter, it is believed not to have been indicative of 
any general dissatisfaction, nor to have originated with 
the people themselves. The undersigned entertain 
great confidence in the conviction which they here 
express ; and that for several reasons entirely satisfac- 
tory to them. In the first place, they, like other 
citizens, mingle more or less with the people, and they 
do not entirely neglect to correspond with intelligent 
gentlemen at a distance from Tuscaloosa. While they 
confess that there have come to them, from time to 
time, through such channels, complaints of one descrip- 
tion or another, in regard to the University, — com- 
plaints even of those evils connected with the course of 
instruction, which the undersigned have just signalized, — 
they are free to say that, until since this subject was 
referred to the Faculty by the members of the Board 
of Trustees assembled here at the late Annual Com- 
mencement, they never received, from any source of 
information whatever accessible to them, the slightest 
hint of the propriety of any sweeping change, or the 
most doubtful suggestion of the expediency of intro- 
ducing here, the system of the University of Virginia. 
This, it is true, is merely negative evidence ; but in a 
question of great public interest, like the present 
negative evidence has weight. That which agitates a 
whole people, cannot but be in the mouths of indi- 
2 



IS , R E r O R T . 

viduals ; and that of which men talk, those who mingle 
with men must hear. 

That there can be no popular demand for the 
introduction of the Virginia system here, is further 
evident from the fact, that not one in twenty of the 
people knows what the Virginia system is. It certainly 
is not what it is apparently believed by some to be ; 
and that is, a system which permits any student to 
pursue any study selected by himself or his guardians, 
at any time, to any extent, and with any rapidity he 
pleases. And the prevalent misapprehension on this 
subject, amounts really to a serious evil; since the 
expectations which have been held out regarding the 
plan are sure, should it be adopted here, to be sadly 
disappointed. But on this point the undersigned pro- 
pose to speak more fully in its proper place. 

The absence of any popular demand for this species 
of change is still further evidenced by the tone of the 
public press, both before and after the request of the 
members of the Board, who were present in July, was 
laid before the public. Nothing can be more certain 
than that, throughout the collegiate year of 1853-54, 
down to the month of May, when some slight troubles 
entirely connected with discipline elicited some discon- 
tented remarks, not one word appeared in any public 
print in Alabama, in relation to the University (and 
the notices were many), which was not congratulatory 
and almost exultant, in view of the steady improve- 



REPORT. 19 

ment of tlie Institution in prosperity, and in view of its 
well-established reputation for thorough and judicious 
methods of instruction, and for the sound and substan- 
tial attainments of its students. And in the expressions 
of discontent just alluded to, and which were directed 
entirely toward police and other regulations and meas- 
ures for the government and not for the instruction of 
the under-graduates, it is worthy of remark how gener- 
ally, and in fact how almost universally, the conductors 
of the press mingled with their words of dissatisfac- 
tion the regret that these events should have befallen 
at a moment when the University, having lived down 
its disasters, had become so proudly prosperous, and had 
succeeded in raising itself so deservedly high in the 
confidence of the people of Alabama. Whoever has 
had access to the public prints of the State generally 
for the past twelve months cannot but be forcibly 
struck with the truth of these reminiscences. The 
undersigned therefore assert, without fear of contra- 
diction, that, if the tone of the public press can be 
regarded as in any degree an index of that of public 
sentiment among a people, then it is so far from being 
true, that there is a popular demand for the subversion 
here of our time-honored course of instruction for the 
sake of introducing one not even known to a majority 
of the people, that the feeling of the masses has been 
entirely the other way, — entirely one of satisfaction and 
content. 

If, further to test this question, we compare the 



20 K E P E T . 

expressions of opinion put forth by the same organs, 
explicitly upon the proposition brought before them in 
the published request of members of the Board of 
Trustees to the Faculty, which has occasioned this 
inquiry, we shall find that nearly every press, in which 
the subject has been elaborately treated, has been 
decided in disapprobation of the change. Some of the 
reasonings on the subject, which the proposition has 
elicited, have proceeded from alumni of the University; 
and the undersigned hazard nothing in saying that they 
have manifested an ability which would do honor to 
graduates of any college in the Union. 

Upon the question whether the Trustees or the 
Faculty have ever been indifferent to improvement, or 
averse to it, some remarks have already been inciden- 
tally made. More specifically it may here be stated, 
that, in order to meet an alleged necessity or demand, 
the Trustees, with the cordial assent of the Faculty, in 
the year 1844, established a special school for the 
instruction of such young men as might desire to 
become teachers without completing the entire colle- 
giate course. A plan of instruction was devised for 
this school, which was designed to extend, in whole, 
over three years ; and the Faculty were authorized at 
their discretion to issue to the students, at their depar- 
ture, certificates of proficiency. Extensive publication 
was made of this arrangement, in the catalogues and 
circulars of the University and in the public prints ; 
biU not one student ever volunteered to avail himself of 



E E P O K T . 21 

its benefits. In the year 1846, tlie Trustees created a 
Department of Law, and elected a Professor. It was 
thought that a professional school in this department 
might be successful in Tuscaloosa, and that its success 
might exert a reflex influence favorable to the pros- 
perity of the Faculty of Arts. But no sufiicient 
number of students ever presented themselves to 
induce the Professor to commence his course, and by 
degrees the school of Law (which the undersigned 
believe was never abolished) passed out of recollec- 
tion. 

The report of Dr. Manly, from which some brief 
extracts have already been given, is another evidence 
of the solicitude which the Board of Trustees have 
always manifested for the improvement of the Univer- 
sity, and for the extension of "the benefits of the 
Institution to a greater number of the citizens of the 
State." In compliance with the request of that body, 
the President of the University, in company with 
another officer, made, during the summer of 1851, an 
extensive journey through various States, attending in 
the meantime the National Educational Convention at 
Cleveland, and gathering, wherever he went, the results 
of a great variety of experiments carefully made under 
the eyes of experienced educators. All this he embod- 
ied in a report read to the Board of Trustees only two 
years ago, and printed by their order. It is absurd to 
suppose that such an amount of pains was taken for 
nothing ; or without a sincere purpose to profit by the 



22 R E r O K T . 

experience of others, and to introduce here any changes, 
whatever they might be, which should seem to hold out 
a promise of increasing the usefulness of this University. 
Yet so little encouragement did the carefully arranged 
statistics of that rej^ort hold out to the spirit of inno- 
vation, that, after the reading of it, not one single voice 
was lifted in behalf of any departure whatever from the 
existing system. It has not been without considerable 
surprise that the undersigned have witnessed the inex- 
plicable fact, that, after a lapse of only two years from 
the presentation of that report, the same Board who 
listened to it and ordered it to be printed, have seri- 
ously entertained a proposition, which the statistics 
contained in that document demonstrate to be ruinous 
in its tendencies to the last degree. 

Since the purpose of Dr. Manly in his report was 
simply to state facts with their natural inferences, and 
not to dictate measures to the Board of Trustees, it may 
possibly be objected, that those who take the view of 
its bearing here expressed fail to understand his state- 
ments, or reason perversely from his figures. Such an 
objection will hardly be thought to lie against the 
inferences of gentlemen who peruse the pamphlet at a 
distance, and whose habits of mind and whose acquaint- 
ance with colleges may be presumed to fit them pecu- 
liarly to form a correct judgment. Bishop Potter, ot 
Pennsylvania, in a document (printed, but not pub- 
lished) relating to the University of that State, which 
he has kindly communicated to the undersigned, after 



REPORT. 23 

speaking of Dr. Manly's report as " the fruit of much 
laborious and careful research," and as " a most valuable 
contribution to the cause of a higher education," charac- 
terizes it as an "able and most conservative report." 
E. C. Herrick, Esq., A. M., Librarian and Treasurer of 
Yale College, remarks incidentally (in a private letter), 
of the question now pending, " I cannot but think that 
Dr. Manly's report would be a very satisfactory refuta- 
tion of the proposed plan." And still more emphat- 
ically observes Dr. Swain, of North Carolina, in the 
conclusion of a most valuable letter on the general 
question, " I read his [Dr. Manly's] pamphlet two years 
ago with pleasure and profit ; and took it for granted 
that his argument and authority would be considered 
conclusive by the managers of your institution. Instead 
of indulging in these hasty expressions of opinion, I 
might well have contented myself with a simple in- 
dorsement of his well-considered views." 

But, notwithstanding all this, the whole question is 
opened up again, and the undersigned are absolutely 
constrained, against their will, to go back to first prin- 
ciples, and to retrace all the steps of a discussion which 
they had hoped, during their day, never to see revived 
in this institution. 

Let it be understood in the outset, that it is in no 
spirit of unfriendliness or opposition to institutions for 
professional, technical, special, or partial education, that 
the undersigned are disposed to remonstrate against the 
transformation to which it is proposed to subject this 



24: K E r O II T . 

University. If there is a demand for such institutions, 
let them be created; if it is true, as is so frequently 
asserted, that hundreds of young men are absolutely cut 
off from any opportunity to acquire the education they 
need, because the University will not (it would be more 
just to say, cannot) give it to them, then there should 
be no delay in providing the facilities which their case 
requires. It cannot be that means are wanting, or ever 
will be so, if the alleged demand be real, to endow and 
furnish schools fashioned in the strictest conformity to 
the popular dictation; for schools to which hundreds 
are waiting to resort so soon as their doors shall be 
opened, can never fail to prove eminently lucrative, 
considered merely as pecuniary investments. If, then, 
this demand be real, there exists not the slightest 
reason for insisting that the University shall provide 
for it ; and if it be not, the argument in favor of change 
crumbles away into nothing. 

To exhibit, however, the entire and true basis upon 
which the undersigned rest their opposition to the pro- 
posed transformation, it is necessary to bring promi- 
nently into view w^hat is the distinctive characteristic of 
a University, — what is that peculiar function which it 
is specially empowered, and, in fact, created, to fulfill ; 
and the possession of which may perhaps serve to ex- 
plain why it is that this frequent demand for popular, 
easy, or optional courses of study, should be continually 
directed against them, instead of venting itself in the 
very obvious and effectual mode of providing institu- 



REPORT. 25 

tions of the kind professedly required. This peculiar 
function is the granting of degrees ; and in the exercise 
of this, the University does all that is essential to its 
office. The University of London, at the present time, 
confines itself to the discharge of this single function ; 
and the early history of all the old Universities of Eng- 
land, or of the continent of Europe, shows that, while 
they certainly furnished instruction, and their instruc- 
tors were excessively numerous, the only recognized 
point of contact between the University as a body and 
the individual student was that in which the latter pre- 
sented himself as a candidate for graduation. The 
value of the degree conferred consisted, of course, as it 
does still, in the fact that it stamped the graduate as a 
scholar — a man well versed in what were called the 
liberal arts, and in philosophy. By what course of 
study he had attained the mastery of these subjects, 
mattered not then, as, in point of fact, in London, and 
to all intents and purposes in Oxford and Cambridge, it 
matters not now: provided the candidate, on the appli- 
cation of certain severe tests of his scholarship and 
knowledge, was found to be worthy of the degree, it 
was awarded as a matter of right. These tests were 
examinations, extended and thorough, oral and written. 
At the present time, the University of London employs 
salaried examiners, who have no other duty than to 
ascertain the merits of applicants for the honor of 
graduation. 

In the older Universities it used to be held, that 



26 RETORT. 

education is not complete and thorougli until the 
student lias been disciplined not only in receiving but 
in imparting knowledge. Every Bachelor of Arts was 
required to teach certain books or subjects, in order 
that he might become a Master ; and " every Master or 
Doctor was compelled by statute, and frequently on 
oath, to teach for a certain period, which was commonly 
two years, immediately subsequent to graduation."* The 
instruction, therefore, which might have been acquired 
in any school, preparatory to an application for gradua- 
tion, was furnished in necessary abundance in the Uni- 
versity towns ; and thus the business of teaching fell 
naturally, in a great measure, under the regulation of 
those institutions themselves. At Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, from which American colleges have borrowed 
most of their peculiarities, a new feature was, in process 
of time, developed. Eleemosynary establishments, 
called colleges, were endowed for the support and 
residence of poor students; and boarding-houses, for 
those who were able to pay, arose in great numbers, 
under the name of halls. Each of these colleges and 
halls was made subject to the government of a resident 
master, who was assisted in his duties by one or more 
tutors. Since their origin, the character of these estab- 
lishments has undergone great changes. At first, the 
proj)er business of the tutors was, mainly, to look after 
the conduct of the pupils, and enforce upon them habits 

* Sir Will, llnmilton's Discussions on Philosophy, Ac. 



REPORT. 27 

of personal neatness; but, in the progress of tlie muta- 
tions -wliicli time lias introduced, they have become 
almost exclusively the teachers of the under-graduates 
in all the studies required to fit them for the University 
examinations, which are to determine their title to a 
degree. 

Since graduation in the English Universities depends 
strictly upon the results of examination, and not upon a 
record of a more or less faithful attention to a pre- 
scribed routine of daily study, it might appear that the 
student there should be subject to no control in regard 
to the order in which he may pursue his studies, or pre- 
pare himself for the final ordeal. But this is not so. €t 
is a manifest necessity that, where trial is by examina- 
tion, there should be some established standard^ by 
which the attainments of each candidate may be tested. 
Such a standard can only be intelligible and definite 
when presented in the form of a prescribed series of 
books, of which the contents are to be perfectly mas- 
tered. This reduces the business of University instruc- 
tion, which is in its intention, and which may be in fact, 
a teaching of subjects of hnoivledge^ to the mere inculca- 
tion (for purposes of graduation) of the substance of 
certain special treatises of science or philosophy, and 
certain particular works of ancient and modern litera- 
ture. Thus is established what is called the college 
curriculum of study. 

As the original design for which the academic honor 
of graduation was instituted was to distinguish those 



28 REPORT. 

who had submitted to a thorough course of intellectual 
training, the subjects of examination, and consequently 
the cuniculum of study, embraced from the beginning 
matters designed to exercise, in due and symmetrical 
proportion, all the faculties of the human mind. The 
seven liberal arts, as they were called, received this 
name because they were believed suitable to furnish 
this training. They were distinguished from the arts of 
handicraft — the mechanic arts — on the one hand, and 
from the arts of embellishment — the fine arts — on the 
other. They are fitted, in their several ways, to induce 
those intellectual habits without which nothing valu- 
able can ever be accomplished in the world of mind ; 
and to furnish that exercise which is as necessary to the 
development of mental as of physical vigor. The pur- 
suit of mathematical studies is well fitted to induce 
habits of close and concentrated attention, and the 
power of following out a continuous and extended train 
of thought. The study of Language invigorates and 
strengthens the memory, leads to a facility in delicate 
discriminations, multij^lies ideas, improves the power of 
expression, gives increased command of the instrument 
by which, mainly, mind influences mind, and suggests 
much material for that species of reasoning which 
rests on probable evidence, through the indications 
it furnishes of the affiliations of the races of man. The 
more systematic exercise of the reason is brought 
into play in the study of Dialectics. Here the learner 
becomes instructed how to apply the touchstone to 



REPORT. 29 

argument, to distinguisli sound reasoning from soph- 
istry, to arrange the materials of a discussion, and to 
present truths of inference in the most impressive form. 
Rhetoric cultivates at once many faculties. It stimu- 
lates the invention by demanding what considerations 
may be alleged in support of specific propositions; it 
disciplines the judgment by calling upon it continually 
to decide nice questions relating to the propriety of 
language; it cultivates the imagination by exercising 
that faculty in all the embellishments of figurative ex- 
pression ; and it trains and corrects the taste by em- 
ploying it to control the exuberance of a fancy too apt, 
when unrestrained, to run into riotous extravagance. 
Natural Philosophy, in its various branches, furnishes 
numerous happy examples of reasoning from induction, 
or inferring truth from probable evidence. Moral Phil- 
osophy is a continuous and improving application of the 
principles of logic to questions which concern the con- 
science; and in its cultivation is calculated to render 
more acute the power of discrimination in matters of 
abstract truth, as well as to establish principles in place 
of feeling as the guide of action. And the Philosophy 
of Mind, the science of self-knowledge, the most impor- 
tant, perhaps, of all studies, considering its influence 
upon the subject, furnishes a discipline of the most 
superior order, as it opens up a world vast as that of 
matter and impalpable as the thinking essence itself 
"Philosophy," says Sir William Hamilton, "the think- 
ing of thought, the recoil of mind upon itself, is one of 



30 R E r O K T . 

the most improving of mental exercises, conducing, 
above all others, to evolve the highest and rarest of the 
intellectual powers. By this the mind is not only- 
trained to philosophy proper, but prepared, in general, 
for powerful, easy, and successful energy, in whatever 
department of knowledge it may more peculiarly apply 
itself" Thus every study throughout the entire range of 
the liberal Arts and the Philosophies has its peculiar use 
and value in drawing into activity and cherishing into 
vi«"or the various powers and faculties of the human 
mind. When all are in due j)roportion combined in a 
system of intellectual training, the pupil emerges from 
the discipline with a mind well balanced, and equally 
fitted to grapple with whatever difficulty. Should he 
now direct his energies, as is usual with the majority of 
men, into one particular channel, he is in no danger of 
adding to the number of those characters so frequently 
met with, whose one-sided development renders them 
giants within the domain of their chosen profession, and 
pigmies without. On the other hand, though in his 
special pursuit he may attain eminence with much or 
with little labor, it will not be at the expense of dis- 
qualifying himself for intelligent intercoui'se with men 
of every other class. Let anyone look round him and 
silently count how very many, within the circle of his 
own personal acquaintance, are men merely of a profes- 
sion or a class. How many are there, whose merits in 
their proper vocation are the theme of general admira- 
tion and praise, yet who are so little thought of as fit to 



REPORT. 31 

advise or suggest or lead in any enterprise out of this 
their peculiar and narrow range of action, that the 
merest hint at such a step, as likely to be volunteered 
on their part, is sufficient to excite a smile. It cannot, it 
will not, be maintained, even by those who most loudly 
demand that our universities shall be converted into 
schools for technical or professional education, that to 
be a merely technical or professional man is all to which 
a youth should aspire. It cannot be that even the most 
earnest of our educational reformers can fail to perceive 
how immensely higher, in the consideration of his fel- 
low-citizens, stands the man who, whether his daily 
avocation be that of a merchant, or a physician, or a 
machinist, or a farmer, or a lawyer, or an iron-master, 
possesses a mind cultivated in all its faculties, and 
stored with a wide range of general knowledge, than 
he who, whatever may be his mastery of his particular 
pursuit, knows nothing beyond it. These men of uni- 
versal cultivation and comprehensive knowledge, are 
the men to whom the less fortunate majority look for 
counsel and guidance in difficulties, for collected calm- 
ness in periods of excitement, for the scrutinizing exami- 
nation of projects of innovation or improvement, for 
judicious opinions as to the results of measures of policy, 
in short for all those manifestations of intellectual supe- 
riority which secure to the thoroughly educated every- 
where a position and an influence which nothing else 
can do. These thoroughly educated men will always 
be the comparatively few, as they always have been 



33 REPORT. 

since the world began; and the reason is, that the 
majority cannot for want of time and means, or will 
not for want of disposition, submit to the steady, long- 
continued, and even painful discipline which can alone 
entitle them to rank among the aristocracy of mind. 
To denounce our colleges, because, where hundreds of 
young men are growing up together, they only educate 
their tens, and to demand that their gates shall be 
thrown so widely open that all those hundreds may 
enter in, is neither just in the first instance nor wise in 
the second. For the fact that, out of the many who 
might be, but few are actually educated, is a fact which, 
however unfortunate it may appear, is attributable to 
nothing else but the unwillingness of the majority to 
submit to the intellectual regimen which the colleges 
prescribe. And the demand that some portions of this 
regimen shall be omitted, and that the stamp of scholar- 
ship, or the diploma which was originally designed to 
be the stamp of scholarship, shall be awarded for a less 
equivalent of labor rendered, can, if successful, have no 
effect but to degrade the distinction and bring the 
honor low, instead of lifting the graduate to the posi- 
tion in fact, which he will have thus secured in name. 

It is, however, very commonly asserted by the advo- 
cates of revolutionary measures in our colleges, that 
they aim not to break down existing systems of educa- 
tion, if any prefer still to cling to them, so much as to 
superadd other and varied methods, partial or thor- 
ough, extended or brief, according to the option of the 
student, or of those who direct his course of training 



REPORT. 33 

Let tlie old curriculum stand, they say, for all who 
choose to follow it ; but let not the college be so nig- 
gardly of the treasures of its learning, as to deny a por- 
tion to those whom misfortune or poverty, or advanced 
age will not permit to enjoy the whole. We object 
not — this is their profession — to any degree of severity 
or thoroughness, or to any extent of range which you 
may choose to prescribe to such as, bowing to your dic- 
tation, consent to submit to this oppression; but we 
demand that everybody shall be educated in his own 
way, thoroughly or partially, profoundly or superfi- 
cially, just as he pleases. 

Now, for the sake of argument, let us admit that, 
on the plan proposed, there may possibly be as many 
volunteers for a thorough course of instruction — the 
very course now prescribed — as there are at present ; 
and therefore that the studies of this class may be sus- 
tained, without any variation from the present arrange- 
ments, no matter how widely the doors are thrown 
open to others. But, then, with only the present means 
and appliances of the college, what is to be done with 
these others? If they are introduced to the regular 
recitations and lectures of the thorough-course students, 
they are tied up in each department to the same inva- 
riable routine, compelled, willingly or unwillingly, to 
travel over the same extent of ground, chained down 
to the same unalterable rate of progress, against which 
we hear so frequent and so stout protest ; and, in case 
they desire to pursue but a single branch of study, or 
but one or two, they find no remedy in the system 

3 



34 REPORT. 

against the necessary waste of two-thirds or three-quar- 
ters of their time. They must, therefore, if properly 
instructed at all, constitute a body entirely, or in great 
measure, independent of the thorough-course students. 
But the reasons which require that their wants should 
be independently provided for, would also require that 
there should be independent provision for every limited 
group of them, whose choice of studies might happen to 
fall in a common direction, while it differed from that 
of the majority. Even in some instances, and in. many, 
if this system of free choice of study should be carried 
out wherever it may lead, a single individual might 
require special provision for his separate instruction. 
Our universities, with their feeble means, might be 
expected to perform all that is attempted by those of 
Germany, with professors and teachers numbered by 
the score or by the hundred. " In the German Univer- 
sities," says Dr. Manly, " which boast of a large circle 
of branches, and are eminently expensive establish- 
ments, professors are maintained who sometimes have 
classes of not more than two or three students (he 
might have said one, and often, for intervals of time, 
none), and this in a country where scholars are num- 
bered by tens of thousands." 

This view of the case divests of all its plausibility 
the proposition to transform our colleges into some- 
thing new, in compliance with an imaginary popular 
demand. It proves that if the thing, for which it is 
affirmed that the popular voice is so decidedly pro- 
nounced, should be conceded as a reality, the result 



REPORT. 35 

would be substantially not to transform an old college, 
but to superadd to it a new one, or lialf-a-dozen new 
ones ; the whole, indeed, in some degree lending each 
other natural aid, but each requiring, in the main, a 
-separate and independent management. Now, even to 
this it would not be necessary to raise any very strenu- 
ous objection, if, along with the proposition to trans- 
form, it could be shown, either that the officers of the 
existing Faculties are able — and by this is simply meant, 
able physically — to endure the increased burthen of 
duties which the change would draw down upon them ; 
or that the change itself would bring with it the means 
of so increasing the academic staff, as to make it equal 
to the vastly increased labor. It is evident, from what 
has already been said, that the first branch of this altern- 
ative cannot be maintained; and if it could, there is 
no reason to suppose that college officers, not usually 
extravagantly paid even for the services they now per- 
form, would submit to a drudgery which would con- 
sume their entire time and waste their entire strength, 
while it condemned them, for absolute want of opportu- 
nity, to a complete cessation, on their own part, from 
all further intellectual progress. None will submit to a 
degradation like this, but such as have uo desire or 
aptitude for further personal improvement,^ — none, there- 
fore, whose names enrolled in the list of a Faculty could 
give to a college reputation, or awaken pride among its 
patrons and friends. As to the other branch of the 
alternative, the probability that the change would so 
improve the revenues of the institution, as to make it 



36 REPORT. 

practicable largely to increase the corps of instruction, 
two remarks may be made. If this probability amounts 
to a certainty, it would seem rather to call for the erec- 
tion of a special institution, which, by the terms of the 
supposition, must be self-sustaining; and which, being 
untrammeled by the necessity of following, with a 
large portion of its students, a Procrustean course, must 
certainly accomplish its objects better than it could do 
while so encumbered. If, on the other hand, there is 
no certainty about it, if the chances are only equal, or 
if they are less than equal, that the revenue will keep 
pace with the necessary increase of expenditure, is it 
not wrong, is it not almost wicked, to expose institu- 
tions already doing good service in the cause of educa- 
tion, to the hazard of utter ruin, for the sake of insti- 
tuting a more than doubtful experiment ? 

But perhaps it will be said that the University of 
Virginia, from which it is proposed to draw the plan of 
our remodeled system of instruction, has not a numer- 
ous body of instructors — has not, in fact, a larger num- 
ber of officers in its Faculty of Arts than we have in 
ours. This fact is certainly undeniable ; but this very 
fact proves that the arguments which are most confi- 
dently relied on in favor of change, are entirely base- 
less. It is said that we must introduce here the system 
of the University of Virginia, in order that every stu- 
dent may have the opportunity, in the words of Dr. 
Wayland, to study "what he chooses, all that he 
chooses, and nothing but what he chooses." Yet this 
the undersigned have, as they believe, shown to be im- 



REPORT 



37 



possible, without that large number of teachers which 
confessedly the University of Virginia has not. And if 
we refer to the statement contained in the catalogue of 
that institution for the last collegiate year, we shall find 
that the Faculty, instead of making any pretence to pro- 
vide for the varying wants of young men who wish to 
study " what they choose, and nothing but what they 
choose," merely arrange their students in classes — not 
the usual college classes, which are the same with every 
officer — but in classes which may be different in differ- 
ent departments, while in the same department they 
are constant throughout the course. It appears, from 
this authority, that the number of classes receiving 
instruction in each department is only in a few cases 
greater, but is quite as often less, in the University of 
Virginia, than in the University of Alabama. In illus- 
tration of this statement the following comparison may 
be made. It exhibits the number of classes simulta- 
neously reciting similar subjects, in the two institutions. 



Latin and its Literature, 
Greek " " " 

French, 
Mathematics, pure, 

" mixed, . 

Geology, &c.. 
Chemistry, 
Ethics, (fee. 

Total, 



Jniv. of Ala. 


Univ. of Va. 


Four . 


. Two. 


Four 


Two. 


Three . 


. Three. 


Two 


Three.* 


Two . 


. Three. 


One 


One. 


One . 


. One. 


Four 


Three. 



Twenty-one. Eighteen. 



The Virginia University appears to offer no advan- 

* The department of pure mathematics in the University of Virginia has nom- 
inally four classes ; but one of these is a class in mixed mathematics. The depart- 
ment of mixed mathematics proper has but two classes. 



38 REPORT. 

tage over our own, as it regards the freedom of the 
student within a given department to select his own 
studies, if we except a slight one in the departments 
which embrace the exact sciences. Supposing, there- 
fore, that the ordinance of the Board of Trustees of this 
University, which was enacted in 1831, opening the 
institution to what were called "partial-course stu- 
dents," should be now again revived ; it would require 
but very slight alterations in regard to the hours of lec- 
ture and recitation, and in regard to the number of 
classes in each department, to give to this college the 
plan of the University of Virginia complete. The lan- 
guage of the law referred to is the following, as printed 
by order of the Board in 1837. " The University shall 
be open to persons who do not desire to take the full 
course and to be graduated as Bachelors of Arts, but 
who desire to take a partial course and be graduated in 
particular departments only ; provided they are found 
qualified for the studies of the department which they 
wish to join ; and provided they take not less than the 
usual number of departments," <fec., <fec. 

But it is certainly not this plan which we are told 
that the people demand. The promise held out, has 
been that the University, as reorganized, should give 
instruction to all who come here to demand it, should 
give them precisely what they demand, and should give 
it precisely when they demand it. Such, at least, is 
undoubtedly the popular understanding of the proposi- 
tion made and widely published in regard to our Uni- 
versity. If the call for change has assumed the definite 



REPORT. 39 

shape of a demand for the system of the University of 
Virginia, it is not because that system, as it exists there, 
is known to the people of Alabama in general, and by 
them approved ; but because that name has been used 
to stand for the thing desired, and which, by the pro- 
posed reorganization, it is hoped to obtain. Expressly 
on this ground would the undersigned, under any cir- 
cumstances, resist the alteration; for since the system 
called by this — for the moment perhaps popular — name 
is certainly not the thing which the people who are 
said to ask for change expect, it is folly to suppose 
that they will be satisfied with it after they come to see 
what it actually is. The thing which the people do 
really desire, if they desire any thing, is that which the 
undersigned have shown to be what it does not belong 
to this University to attempt to supply, on the ground 
that it either will not pay and is therefore impractica- 
ble and cannot but be ruinous, or that if it will pay, it 
has no need of the University. 

The very small number of students of Arts furnished 
by Virginia to her own University, as has already been 
shown earlier in this Report, is evidence enough that the 
system has not the approbation of Virginians them- 
selves. This fact will appear more unanswerably true, 
if we extend the comparison to other colleges, where 
the close system is severely carried out. The College 
of South Carolina, for instance, exhibits a list of 189 
under-graduates for the collegiate year 1853-54, of 
whom 175 are furnished by the State of South Caro- 
lina itself The total white population of the State, 



40 R E !• O R T . 

according to tlie census of 1850, is 2*74,563 ; while that 
of Virginia, as already stated, is 894,800, furnishing 
only 1G3 students of Arts to the State University. If 
South Carolina patronized her college no better than 
Virginia does her University (the professional schools 
apart), she would send to Columbia but 50 students 
instead of 17 5. The South Carolina College is one of 
some standing in years. Let us take another, also main- 
taining rigidly the close system, which has been in 
operation only for a limited period — the University of 
Mississippi. The total number of students on the cata- 
logue of this institution for the past year is 158, from 
which subtracting all but those whose residences are 
in the State, and who are pursuing the regular under- 
graduate course, we shall have 134, upon a population 
of 295,718. Yet if Mississippi were no more partial to 
the course of education in her University than Virginia 
seems to be to that which hers has adopted, she would 
furnish to it only 53 under-graduate students. 

In the following table are presented the results of 
similar calculations for a number of colleges whose cata- 
logues happen to be at hand. The dates are the latest 
accessible, and are all recent. In the first column are 
placed the number of under-graduates which each State 
Tvould furnish to the college belonging to it, if it fur- 
nished the same number, in proportion to population, 
which Virginia furnishes to her University ; and in the 
second are placed the actual numbers present, as given 
in the several catalogues, excluding all from other 
States, and all who are not regular under-graduates : — 





E E P it T . 






Proportional 


Actual 




Number. 


Number. 


University of Va., 


. 163 . 


. 163 


University of Ala., 


11 


107 


S. C. College, 


. 50 . 


. 175 


University of Miss., 


53 


134 


University of Geo., 


. 95 . 


. 107 


University of N. C, 


100 


139 


Yale College, 


. 66 . 


. 135 


Harvard University, 


178 


238 


Dartmoutli College, 


. 57 . 


. 160 



41 



It appears to the undersigned tliat facts of this 
nature, and which admit of being multiplied to a much 
greater extent, combine to furnish an absolute demon- 
stration that the system of instruction practiced at the 
University of Virginia is, for students not attending the 
professional schools, absolutely out of favor and un- 
popular where it is best known, — in the State of Virginia 
itself. It appears that not one single consideration 
exists to encourage the belief, that that system, trans- 
planted here, would be any more favorite with the 
people of Alabama than it is in Virginia. It appears 
that, though the name has become a popular catchword 
. nong those who have urged the remodeling of our 
own State University, yet the reality which it repre- 
sents is not at all that thing which it is evidently here 
supposed to be ; and that its introduction with us could 
only lead to immediate disappointment, and ultimate 
dissatisfaction and disgust. If it should at first be suc- 
cessful in attracting to the University a material 
increase of numbers — and, considering how much has 
been promised of which the performance is impossible, 



42 REPORT. 

perhaps it might — it is quite hopeless to expect that its 
popularity would outlive the discovery of the hoUow- 
ness of its pretensions. 

The undersigned have thus far argued this question 
as if it were one of mere policy or interest — a question 
to be decided by the probable comparative popularity 
of different plans of organization. They have fully 
proved, at least in their own opinion, that, even con-* 
sidered from this humble point of view, the proposed 
change is inexpedient, as being full of danger, if not 
certain to end in disaster and ruin. But it is not here 
that the undersigned find those considerations, which 
ought first of all to demand the attention of a wise man 
planning a scheme of education, which is perhaps to 
give character to the intellectual training of a whole 
people, and to perpetuate its consequences, for good or 
for ill, to many succeeding generations. It will be a 
sad day for the cause of sound education, if it shall 
ever happen that our institutions of learning shall be 
found watching the fluctuations of a too usually unin- 
formed popular opinion, and endeavoring to adapt 
themselves to its incessant changes. The will of the 
people, in regard to the management of all public 
interests, must of course ultimately prevail; but the 
true will of the people can never be known until the 
people themselves are fully informed. There are some 
subjects which to present superficially is almost of 
necessity to present erroneously; since it is true of 
them, as of many things in material nature, that the 
color of the surface is entirely the reverse of what 



REPORT. 43 

appears beneath. To talk of the organization and 
appropriate functions of colleges to those whose per- 
sonal observation has never extended beyond the com- 
mon school or the academy, is almost necessarily to 
awaken unfounded impressions, unless much greater 
explicitness of statement and copiousness of explanation 
is employed, than it is always, or even generally, easy 
to give. Therefore is it, that to appeal on these sub- 
jects to the popular judgment — by which is meant the 
judgment of the whole mass of the people — is, as a 
general rule, injudicious ; since, while nothing is on the 
one hand more easy than to unsettle confidence in the 
existing order of things, nothing is more difficult on the 
other than to make the whole subject so universally 
clear as, if evils exist, to insure their wise correction, 
or, if they do not, to re-establish again the confidence 
which has once been shaken. 

It is, on this account, in the opinion of the under- 
signed, much to be lamented, that the question of the 
proposed re-organization of this University has been 
made a subject of general discussion, instead of being 
considered and disposed of by the Board of Trustees 
exclusively. It is not in their power to say that dis- 
satisfaction has not thus been awakened in quarters 
where it did not exist before. It seems to them, 
indeed, hardly possible that some such effect should 
not have been produced ; but so far from believing it 
to be their duty, in case of the appearance of any 
indications of this sort, to give way to the inconsiderate 
demands of a popular clamor, or to abandon the cause 



44 REPORT. 

of whicli their official position renders them, in their 
own view, the bounden defenders, they would believe 
rather that it belonged to them to put forth every 
exertion of which they are capable, to enlighten and 
correct and modify the public sentiment itself. And 
if, after thus washing their own hands clean of all par- 
ticipation in the sacrilege, they should yet be compelled 
to witness the consummation of the threatened ruin, 
they would prefer still to contend single-handed against 
the destroyers, rather than join in the destruction ; and, 
if it must come to that at length, to die in the last 
ditch. 

Discarding, therefore, the question, will the pro- 
posed system be popular or not — will it bring great 
accessions of numbers or not — as being one of but sub- 
ordinate importance, the undersigned protest against 
the system on the ground that its introduction would be 
a practical treason against the cause of sound education 
in Alabama, and against the interests of the great 
republic of letters everywhere. It would be to offer 
a direct encouragement and reward to the desertion of 
that round of thorough and varied mental discipline, 
which the scholars of all time have pronounced to be 
absolutely necessary to make a scholar. It is to place 
the partially, or the superficially, or even the partially 
and superficially educated man (for it will come to that 
at last), practically on a par, so far as college sanctions 
go, with the profound and thorough — to prostitute the 
people's mint to the manufacture of base counterfeits, 
and give to worthless brass the stamp of gold. For 



REPORT. 45 

tte popular demand of wliich we hear so often, and 
to whicli we are reminded tliat we must yield if we 
would not be swept away by it, is not, after all, a 
demand so much, for tbe opportunity and permission to 
learn, as for the attainment of a deceptive seeming to 
have learned. It is not so mucb a claim for admission 
to the schools, as for the diplomas which the schools 
have it in their power to award. Nothing could put 
this assertion more completely beyond all question 
than the fact that the outcry is never for the erection 
of independent schools, which, if the demand is real and 
is for real knowledge, would of course be crowded and 
could not but be profitable ; and which would have the 
great additional advantage, that being erected to meet 
a distinctly announced want, could be modeled on pre- 
cisely the plan best adapted to satisfy the impatient 
public; but is invariably for the transformation of a 
college into some novel shape, for the breaking up of 
its settled system of education, for the rejection of this 
study as antiquated and that study as useless, and, in 
short, for a Jack-Cadelike turning of the coat of the 
commonwealth of letters, and setting an entirely new 
nap on it. And if we compare with each other those 
institutions in the country which have endeavored to 
accommodate themselves to this asserted popular 
demand, we shall find that, as a general rule, when 
they have offered simply the knowledge without the 
diploma, the boon has been regarded with contemptu- 
ous indifference ; but that when they have offered the 
diploma at the same time, they have sometimes secured 



46 REPORT. 

a respectable attendance. Yet even in this case, there 
lias been no example of a throng like what has been 
anticipated here, attracted by the concession. If, in 
describing the attendance, it is allowable even to use 
the word respectable, as above, it certainly would not 
be allowable to use a stronger word. 

As an example of a college offering the knowledge 
without the diploma — permitting students, in other 
words, the same latitude of choice which is granted in 
the University of Virginia, but withholding from them 
the honor of graduation — may be instanced the Univer- 
sity of Georgia. The latest catalogue of this institution 
which happens to be at hand (that of 1848-9), gives 
the total number of its students for the year at 140. 
The number of partial course, or " University " students, 
is not stated; but in Dr. Manly's report (1852) a state- 
ment is given from one of the professors, which puts 
the average number at only four or five. President 
Church, in a recent letter, speaking of the system, says, 
"The result has been anything but favorable. Occa- 
sionally a student of this class has been clever and has 
done well ; but most have not been much benefited — 
and in many instances I think they have been injured." 
Dr. Church proceeds to add — and it will be noticed 
how completely the remark corroborates the position 
which the undersigned have been endeavoring to main- 
tain : " The friends, however, of the Virginia system, I 
apprehend, will say that our partial course is very dif- 
ferent from their system; that it takes away the 
stimulus to effort by making the irregular student an 



REPORT. 47 

inferior order, and depriving Mm of all expectation of 
college honors. And this is doubtless true." Yes, it is 
true — it is the desire for the stamp, and not for the 
knowledge which the college has in its power to 
bestow, which only can draw students of this class to 
such an institution, or make them diligent after it has 
attracted them. 

A similar illustration may be found in the Univer- 
sity of Rochester. In this institution there are two 
distinct courses of study on the principle of the close 
system; one called the Classical, and the other the 
Scientific. They differ mainly in the respect that the 
latter course substitutes the modern instead of the 
ancient languages throughout the entire period of 
instruction. The plan is also so arranged, that the 
student may pass from the classical to the scientific 
course, if he pleases, at the end of the Sophomore year, 
without prejudice to his standing. But, besides this, it 
is permitted to students to select their own departments 
at pleasure, as in the Virginia University, but without 
admitting them at the end, like the others, to a degree. 
The catalogue of this University for 1853-4, shows, out 
of a total of one hundred and eighteen under-graduates, 
only eleven of this class, of whom oiAjfour have advanced 
beyond a single year. 

Union College, in the same State, may serve as example 
of the influence which the hope of obtaining a degree 
exerts to enlist recruits in this sort of educational 
guerilla regiment. This College offers, like the Roches- 
ter University, the scientific and the classical courses 



48 REPORT. 

above described ; and it also offers, like the same again, 
but with tlie offer of a degree besides, the full freedom 
to select a course at pleasure, which is the distinguish- 
ing characteristic of the Virginia University. In the 
catalogue of this institution, for the third term of 1854, 
we find a total of 241 under-graduates, and out of them, 
the large number of 57 are " University students." The 
number, we say, is large ; and it is so when we compare 
it with the insignificant exhibit of the Kochester or the 
Georgia University; yet, after all, it is remarkably a 
minority in the grand total of Union College itself. 
Now, if this " open system " is more popular than the 
other, the fact ought to manifest itself in the colleges 
which professedly furnish both and crown those who 
follow them with equal honor, by showing the balance 
of numbers correspondingly in its favor ; but this is a 
thing which never happens. 

The University of Virginia itself, prosperous as at 
the first view of its catalogue it seems, enjoys but a very 
moderate prosperity in its Faculty of Arts. Were it as 
well supported by the people of Virginia as the College 
of South Carolina is supported by the citizens of that 
State, instead of 163 Virginia youth under this Faculty, 
it would have 632. 

The result of these comparisons is, in the view of 
the undersigned, conclusive of the fact which they set 
out to prove, viz. that the demand for an "open" 
system of instruction in colleges, proceeds not, as is as- 
serted, from a genuine desire for special or partial instruc- 
tion, but simply and solely from the ambition to obtain 



REPORT. 49 

the college stamp of scholarsliip, without submitting to 
tliat systematic and severe intellectual training which 
only can make the scholar. And it also incidentally 
proves, that there is in the mass of the community, after 
all, too much good sense, and too true a discrimination 
between pretense and reality, between the tinsel and 
the gold, to accept, as a general rule, the dispensation 
when it is offered; but that, in contempt of all the 
seducing railways to graduation which compliant Uni- 
versities have seen fit to construct, the great majority 
still press stoutly on in the difficult but well-beaten 
path which their fathers trod before them, confident 
that their well-developed muscles and vigorous limbs 
will lend them, at the end of the course, an infinite 
superiority over those who land from the cars with 
scarcely the consciousness of Jiaving put forth an 
exertion by the way. 

The undersigned are further confirmed in the con- 
viction they have expressed as to the true object and 
motive of the demand for "open" systems, by the 
nature of the objections so continually raised against 
the usual curriculum of collegiate study. These objec- 
tions are invariably founded on the assumed want of 
practical usefulness of the classics and of the higher 
mathematics. "It is objected that mathematical knowl- 
edge, to most students, is of little practical use. The 
plain rules of arithmetic, it is said, are all which most 
men ever find occasion to apply. * * * Why, it is 
asked, should a student be compelled to devote years 
to the acquisition of a species of knowledge which is 
4 



so REPORT. 

useful only as it enables liim to advance to the study of 
navigation, surveying, astronomy, and other sciences 
into which mathematical principles largely enter ; when 
he has no wish or expectation to engage practically in 
either of these sciences; and will probably, from his 
distaste for the whole subject, forget in a few years 
what he has learned with so much labor ? " This is the 
form in which the objection to the mathematics is stated 
in the reply of the Faculty of Yale College to a resolu- 
tion of the President and Fellows of that institution, 
passed in 1827, inquiring into the expediency of remod- 
eling the plan of instruction in operation there. And 
in this form we continually hear it reiterated by those 
who, among the people, complain of the severity or the 
practical inutility of the plan of instruction here. What 
is the man to do — that is the perpetually recurring 
question — with the abstract mathematics with which 
you weary the youth? Will the theory of functions 
make him a better lawyer, or the calculus a better 
theologian, or analytic geometry a better merchant, 
than he would be without them? The objector utterly 
ignores any other species of benefit derivable from the 
study, but that which appears in the direct and visible 
application of the knowledge acquired to the immediate 
business of life. Even upon this ground, it is not diffi- 
cult to meet and to answer him. Though he may not 
himself have occasion to employ in practice all the 
science in which he is instructed, yet he cannot avoid 
coming in contact with men whose business it is to 
make such applications. Is it of no importance to him 



REPORT. 51 

to be able to judge of meu as well as of matter ? Will 
it be of no value to him to be conscious of some power 
to read and duly estimate tlie attainments of tliose on 
wliose professional opinions lie may perhaps, at one time 
or another, be called upon to stake all that he possesses ? 
" Granting," say the Yale College Faculty, in the reply 
above quoted, " that he loses from his memory many or 
most of the details of the sciences, he still knows where 
to apply for information, and how to direct his inquiries ; 
and is able to judge correctly of the talents and preten- 
sions of those who are prominent in any one department, 
and whom he may wish to employ in the accomplish- 
ment of actual business. He is acquainted in the region 
where he is, acts more understandingly in what he un- 
dertakes, and is found, in consequence of his knowledge, 
to be, in all his transactions, a more practical man." 

But what if he were not ? The undersis^ned desire to 
rely on no such line of argumentation as this. What if he 
does lose from his memory all the details of mathemat- 
ical science he ever knew, above the mere arithmetic of 
every day ? It is undeniable, and no sound reasoner on 
the philosophy of education ever denied, that the study 
of these details, if it has been diligently and not too 
exclusively pursued, has left behind it an effect of inap- 
preciable value. No study can compare with that of 
the mathematics, in creating and fixing habits of close 
and concentrated attention, and of following out con- 
nected and lons^-continued trains of thousrht. Yet, 
without habits of this kind, what may seem to be 
natural gifts of the most brilliant character, may, and 



52 REPORT. 

will fail inevitably to produce any valuable results ; since 
in mincl, as surely as in matter, it is labor only whicli 
builds the pyramids. Even Sir William Hamilton, in 
his able and in most respects, it must be confessed, just 
strictures upon the excessive employment of mathemat- 
ical study, as an instrument of mental training, is com- 
pelled to confess its usefulness in this particular. " The 
study," he says, " if pursued in moderation, may be ben- 
eficial in the correction of a certain vice, and in the form- 
ation of its corresponding virtue. The vice is the habit 
of mental distraction ; the virtue, the habit of continu- 
ous attention." And though he maintains that " math- 
ematics are not the only study which cultivates the 
attention, neither is the kind and degree of attention 
which they tend to induce the kind and degree of atten- 
tion which our other and higher speculations require 
and exercise ;" and though he quotes, with his assent, 
the observation of Kirwan, that "there is no science 
which does not equally require it," — still the experience 
and testimony of ages must be regarded in these partic- 
ulars as an offset to his high authority ; and it must be 
admitted as incontestibly established, that the mathe- 
matics are the most powerful of all known instruments 
for training the mind to habits of undivided attention. 
And so long as without the power of attention, no other 
faculties of the mind are controllable by their possessor 
so as to be available for any valuable end ; it is to no pur- 
pose to sneer at this, as being in the humblest rank of 
mental powers, in order to bring into disrepute the 
studies by which it is most efficiently cultivated. 



REPORT. 53 

To those, therefore, who cry out for the omission of 
mathematical studies from the college curriculum, or for 
a system so conveniently open that they may be able to 
omit them for themselves, the undersigned would reply 
that the omission destroys one of the most important 
of the guaranties hitherto regarded as indispensable, 
that the course of study shall produce the result, which 
the University, by its diploma, is to certify to have been 
produced — symmetrical mental training and sound 
scholarship. 

But if the mathematics, and especially the higher 
mathematics of the college course, have been subjects of 
attack, the ancient classics have been no less so. " It is 
often asked," says President Sparks, in his inaugural 
address, " Why waste so much time in studying the dead 
languages, in acquiring Greek and Latin, which are sel- 
dom used afterwards ? Why not fill up this long period 
with studies of more immediate utility^ which, at the 
same time that they help to train the mind and form 
the character, communicate a knowledge of men and 
things, which may he turned to account in the common 
affairs of lifeV In the same spirit, an anonymous 
English writer, in a vigorous onslaught upon classical 
learning, published in 1850, and considered of import- 
ance enough to be made the subject of an article in one 
of the leading British reviews, inquires, " Is the mere 
classical scholar as well fitted as persons trained in other 
ways, for doing the things which need be done in such 
times as those in which we are living ? Do we find that 
this is the best training, in an active and jostling and 



54 REPORT. 

stirring age like the present, for the senate, the bar, the 
platform, or the press ? Can the mere scholar sway the 
minds of the men of Manchester or of Birmingham f " 
Without stopping to remark that the men who leave 
the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and who are 
here signalized as " mere scholars," have, for the most 
part, swayed the minds of the men of Manchester and 
of Birmingham, down to the present day, it is sufficient 
to observe that in these extracts and many other similar 
ones which might be quoted, we have still the idea 
standing prominently out, that the college curriculum 
ought to furnish " knowledge which may be turned to 
account in the common affairs of life;" and that the 
course of undergraduate training ought to be conducted 
with the view to turn out youth immediately fit " to 
sway the minds of the men of Manchester and of Birm- 
ingham." The perpetual recurrence of this idea in all 
the writings of all the modern advocates of new systems 
of collegiate instruction, is truly disheartening. The ap- 
parent absence of any just aj^prehension of what it is 
which a college, in its intention, undertakes to do, or of 
any sort of appreciation of the value of the object at 
which the college aims, make it necessary continually to 
fall back upon first principles, and to fritter away time 
and waste breath in endless explanations. The true 
philosophy of this subject is found so well expressed in 
the following passage from the able letter of President 
Thornwell of the S. S. College, to Gov. Manning of 
that State, that the undersigned believe they cannot 
do better than to adopt it. " The selection of studies 



REPORT. 55 

must be made, not with reference to tlie comparative 
importance of their matter, or the practical value of the 
knowledge, but with reference to their influence in un- 
folding and strengthening the powers of the mind ; as 
the end is to improve mind^ tlie fitness for the end is the 
prime consideration. ' As knowledge,' says Sir William 
Hamilton, ' (man being now considered as an end to 
himself) is only valuable as it exercises, developes, and 
invigorates the mind, so a university, in its liberal 
faculty, should especially prefer those objects of study 
which call forth the strongest and most unexclusive en- 
ergy of thought, and so teach them, too, that this energy 
shall be most fully elicited in the student. For specu- 
lative knowledge, of whatever kind, is only profitable 
to the student, in his liberal cultivation, inasmuch as it 
supplies him with the object and occasion of exerting 
his faculties ; since powers are only developed in propor- 
tion as they ai'e exercised, that is, put forth into energy. 
The mere possession of scientific truths is, for its own 
sake, valueless ; and education is only education inas- 
much as it at once determines and enables the student 
to educate himself.' Hence^ the introduction of studies 
on the ground of their practical utility is, pro tanto, sub- 
versive of the college. It is not its office to make planters, 
mechanics, lawyers, physicians, or divines. It has nothing 
directly to do with the uses of knowledge. Its business is 
with minds, and it employs science only as an instru- 
ment for the improvement and perfection of mind. 
With it, the habit of soiind thinMng is more than a thou- 
sand thoughts. When, therefore, the question is asked, 



56 REPORT. 

as it often is asked, by ignorance and empiricism, ^o^lat is 
the use of certain departments of the college curriculum, 
the answer should turn not upon the henefits which^ in 
aftei' life^ may he reaped from these pursuits^ hut upon 
their immediate subjective influence upon the cultivation 
of the human facultiesy 

Now, considered as an instrument of intellectual dis- 
cipline, the study of language has, from the earliest 
times been regarded as inestimably valuable. Man can- 
not think but in signs, and the signs of his thoughts are 
words. But words in their connection combine them- 
selves according to laws, which laws inhere deeply in the 
nature of things, and closely connect themselves with 
the philosophy of the mind. It is not true, as is often 
asserted, that the study of language is the mere acquisi- 
tion of a nomenclature, or the substitution of one nom- 
enclature for another — a weary exercise of the memory 
alone, with a lexicon for a text book. So far otherwise 
is the fact, that there is no more improving exercise of 
the judgment, no better sharpener of the perception of 
nice distinctions, no more facile guide to the power of 
easy abstraction, and certainly no more rapid and effi- 
cient help to correctness, copiousness, and force of ex- 
pression, than the critical study of language. If, in 
some of these respects, it ranks below that of metaphys- 
ics, rhetoric, or logic, in others it stands above them ; 
and if the discipline which it furnishes is less severe, it 
is on that account the more desirable to retain it, as it 
furnishes the happiest preparation for that more trying 
regimen which they introduce. 



REPORT 



6T 



But if the study of language generally lias the value 
which is here claimed for it, that of the languages of 
ancient Eome and Greece possesses this merit in an 
eminent degree. In them those principles of the philos- 
ophy of speech, to which allusion has been made, and 
which constitute in their systematized form the science 
of General Grammar, are more perfectly and more hap- 
pily illustrated, than in any other known tongues, liv- 
ing or dead. And not only is it true that, as languages, 
they thus furnish to the linguistic philosopher the most 
interesting, as they do at the same time to the youthful 
student the most improving, of all the subjects em- 
braced in this department of knowledge ; but also, it 
most fortunately happens, that their literature presents 
the happiest examples of language in its proper use — 
the most unexceptionable models of historical, dramatic, 
poetical, metaphysical, and oratorical composition, that 
the world has ever seen. We have, then, in the Greek 
and Roman tongues, the instrument of human thought 
in its most perfect form ; and in the Greek and Roman 
classic authors, the application and the uses of the 'in- 
strument in their most admirable and elegant illustra- 
tions. So strongly have these considerations impressed 
the educators — it may almost be said universally — of 
all modern time, that the perpetually recurring cry of 
the " practical men " of the entire century which pre- 
cedes us — Cui bono? what will all this Latin and Greek 
do for us in the business of spinning cotton and raising 
potatoes ? — has been of no avail whatever to dislodge 
^jhe classics from our colleges, or even to unsettle the 

\ 



58 REPORT. 

firmness of the tenure by which they maintain their 
prescriptive prominence there. In view of these con- 
siderations, how empty and shallow does all this revo- 
lutionary clamor appear ! And of how utterly trivial 
importance is it, whether the student who has experi- 
enced the inestimable benefits which spring from a 
thorough study of the "Humane Letters," remembers, 
or fails to remember, through all his after life, the mere 
facts of knowledge, which, as necessary incidentals to 
this training, he picked up during his student career ! 
To an objection of this kind — and it is one of no unfre- 
quent occurrence — may be replied, in the felicitous lan- 
guage of one of our own alumni, himself an honor to 
the system of training hitherto pursued in the Univer- 
sity of Alabama :* "Forgotten your Latin and Greek ! 
Well, and what if you have ? Who expects you to re- 
tain, as man^ all the 'knowledges' that you learned, 
as hoy f But the discipline and refinement which those 
noble models of thought and style imparted, you cannot 
have lost. You cannot have lost that delicacy of per- 
ception, that exactness of reasoning, that distinctness of 
moral truth, that elegance and purity of expression, 
which the classics invariably bestow upon their faithful 
votaries. It is impossible to sit down to a symposium 
with the gods, and rise up wholly mortal. Like Moses 
descending from the Mount, you will bear, impressed 
upon your front, some of the traces of Divinity." 

But it is only the very unlettered, or the very weak, 
who indulge in this utter depreciation of the value of 

* W. C. L. Richardson, Esq., of Camden, Alabama. 



REPORT. 69 

classical study. There liave certainly been learned and 
good men, who, induced by the occasional earnestness 
of the demand for more practical education for practical 
men, have consented to lend their aid toward meeting 
this demand. A number of the colleges of the country 
have presented to the applicants for admission, a choice 
between two courses of study — one of them that which 
is common in the colleges of the United States, and the 
other distinguished from this mainly in the exclusion of 
the Greek and Roman classics from the curriculum. 
The fact, however, that they retain these studies in 
either course, sufficiently demonstrates the sense they 
entertain of their value; a sense which, in some 
instances in which the opportunity has naturally arisen, 
they have not hesitated to express. An illustration of 
this remark occurs in a report presented to the Board 
of Trustees of the University of Rochester, by a com- 
mittee of their body, in the year 1850, on the subject 
of the plan of instruction to be pursued in the collegi- 
ate department there. The plan recommended by the 
committee, in this report, which was subsequently 
adopted and which is now in operation, embraced the 
parallel "classical" and "scientific" courses described 
above ; yet the committee, in speaking of the classics, 
use the following language : " They," the committee, 
" have no desire of detracting from the value of classical 
studies, and much less have they any disposition to go 
over the old argument upon the subject. They are 
unanimously of oj)inion that the critical and extended 
study of the languages of ancient Greece and Rome — 



60 RETORT. 

languages which, though no longer spoken in their orig- 
inal forms, are still upon the lips of many nations, and 
live again in several of the tongues of modern Europe, 
constituting an important part of our vocabulary, and 
affording, in the exercise of translation, a discipline of 
incomparable excellence in the discriminating use of 
words, and in all the niceties of construction ; languages 
so copious in resources and admirable in structure, so 
pure in the style of the authors, and rich in a literature 
that can boast of the highest models of eloquence and 
the best specimens of poetry in all its varieties ; that 
contains the fountains of philosophy, and is replete with 
the spirit of ancient civilization; that is stored with 
glorious examples of patriotism and heroic virtue, and 
adorned with the gay pictures of an imaginative my- 
thology — is one of the most valuable as it is the most 
elegant of studies, to those who aim at distinguished 
scholarship and will devote the requisite time to their 
education." 

In like manner. President Quincy, of Harvard, in a 
communication to the Board of Overseers of that insti- 
tution, published in 1841, and prepared in advocacy of 
a plan by which it was proposed to permit an entire 
abandonment of the classics, at the pleasure of the 
student, after the completion of the freshman year, 
bears testimony to the great value of the studies which, 
in obedience to an imaginary popular requisition, he 
consents to see discarded. " That there are advantages 
in the study of the ancient languages — that they are 
better adapted than most other studies, to inure stu- 



R E P O K T . 61 

dents to overcome intellectual difficulties, and secure a 
habit of solid and vigorous application at an early 
period of life — that these languages are mixed, etymo- 
logically, with all the languages of modern Europe, and 
with none more than our own — that, as mere inventions, 
as pieces of mechanism, they are more beautiful than 
any of the modern languages — that the w^orks they con- 
tain have longest stood the test of time, and pleased the 
greatest number of exercised minds — are reasons why 
they should he made the groundivorh of the early train- 
ing of all ivho aim at the distinction of a liberal educa- 
tion ; and this, on the proposed system, will be effected 
at the schools, and in the first year in college." And, 
in connection with this testimony, it may here be re- 
marked that " the proposed system," after a fair trial at 
Harvard, proved an entire failure. During the presi- 
dency of Hon. Edward Everett, the liberty of election 
between studies, or, in other words, the freedom to 
abandon the classics, was materially restricted; and 
that gentleman himself, as the undersigned state on the 
authority of a private letter received from him, was in 
favor of returning entirely to a prescribed course of 
study. 

But while thus the value of classical study, in the 
subjective influence it exercises upon the student, is vin- 
dicated not only by a consideration of the nature of the 
study itself, but also by the testimony of judicious edu- 
cators everywhere, even of those who have consented to 
its optional banishment from the college curriculum, it 
is not difficult, after all, to disprove the assertion so fre- 



62 REPORT. 

queiitly and so flippantly made, that the knowledge 
which this species of study furnishes to the youth, is 
without any practical use in later life. And here, in 
employing the words, practical use, the undersigned 
would not be understood to intend a use so intensely 
and literally and materially practical, as to manifest 
itself in superiority of skill in planting cotton, or unu- 
sual wisdom in managing stock ; for if a test so gross is 
to be applied to the attainments of the scholar in every 
department, many other branches of learning beside the 
ancient classics will fall under the ban. But if propri- 
ety of speech, ease and copiousness of expression, and 
those various graces of conversation which distinguish 
the man of letters, may be regarded as practical bene- 
fits to their possessor, if the greater respect which they 
enable him to command from his surrounding fellow- 
men is a tribute worth receiving, if the substantial addi- 
tion to his influence over others, and to his power of 
benefiting mankind which they bestow, be not a thing 
to be despised, then will the man in whose youthful 
culture the ancient classics have not been overlooked, 
carry with him to the latest day of his life, advantages 
derived from their study, which no sordid computation 
of dollars and cents can ever adequately represent. 

The practical usefulness of the learned languages is 
also proved, by the extreme facility with which to one 
familiar with them, the languages of modern Europe 
may be acquired. It is believed that, with the oppo- 
nents of classical study, the utility of a knowledge of 
modem languages has never been questioned — or rather 



R E P O K T . 63 

that this utility lias always been a cardinal point of 
their creed. Now, since all the languages of southern 
Europe, are directly founded on the Latin, and the Latin 
itself is much dependent on and beautifully illustrated 
by the Greek, the acquisition of these latter is substan- 
tially an acquisition of all the rest. Whoever has, after 
a tolerable acquaintance with the ancient tongues, ad- 
dressed himself to the task of acquiring the French, or 
the Spanish, or the Italian, or all of these languages, 
must have been delighted with the extreme facility 
with which he has found himself able to master them. 
Nor is this entirely owing, though it may be so in great 
measure, to the affiliation of all these offshoots from a 
common linguistic origin ; but there is something in the 
thorough study of a language which approaches so 
nearly as the Latin, or the Greek, to theoretic perfec- 
tion, which gives a power of mastery over all other 
tongues not obtainable by any other species of prepara- 
tion. The following passage from Dr. Wayland's inter- 
esting work on the present collegiate system of the 
United States, happily illustrates this proposition. " A 
few years since," says Dr. Wayland, " I had the pleasure 
of meeting one of the most learned German scholars 
who has visited this country. I asked him how it was 
that his countrymen were able, at so early an age, to 
obtain the mastery of so many languages. He replied, 
I began the study of Latin at an early age. Every 
book I studied, I was made thoroughly acquainted with. 
I was taught to read and to re-read, translate forwards 
and backwards, trace out every word and know every 



64 R E P O K T . 

tiling about it. Before I left a book, it became as 
familiar to me as if written in German. After this, I 
had never any difficulty with any other language!''"^' 

And on tbis point, it may finally be added, that, in 
tbe present state of the world's literature, some famil- 
iarity witb the classic authors of Greece and Rome is, 
to any man who aspires to the name of a scholar, simply 
a necessity. The literature of all modern Europe is 
inextricably interwoven with that of Greece and 
Rome — our own no less than every other. We 
cannot be literary men, and yet be ignorant of the 
classics. The idea is utterly preposterous ; and all the 
attempts to decry the ancient learning by representing 
it as so much " learned lumber," and thus endeavoring 
to bring it into disrepute, will have no other effect than 
to awaken the suspicion or establish the certainty that 
their originators are no better scholars than they should 
be, themselves. 

Is it possible, then, that the Trustees of this Univer- 
sity will deliberately resolve to award the honor of 
graduation, to confer the diploma which, from the ear- 
liest history of colleges, has been recognized only as the 
certificate of genuine scholarship, upon men who will- 
fully neglect that which always has been, and inevitably 
always must be, the first essential to the scholar ? Is it 
possible that they will do this ruinous thing, at a time 
when the University is in the enjoyment of a sound and 
healthy prosperity, such as it never has experienced 
before ; and such as, to all who have been familiar with 

* Waj'laiul on the American College System, 



R E P K T . 65 

the early history of other colleges, is not only satisfac- 
tory but highly encouraging ? Is it possible that they 
will do it, with the evidence before them of an entirely 
tranquil contentment pervading the whole people, in 
regard to the system of instruction in operation here ; 
and in view of the fact that the proposition for a 
change, published everywhere throughout the State, 
has awakened only an occasional and feeble response ; 
while it has at the same time elicited from the scattered 
friends of sound education so numerous and elaborate 
and able vindications of the existing order of things, as 
to prove beyond all question that the sound sense of 
the people is satisfied with what we have, and asks for 
nothing better ? Is it possible that they will do this, 
and in doing so substitute in place of a tried and ap- 
proved system, one which has not even the guaranty of 
past success to recommend it ; but which is actually, in 
spite of all impressions heretofore existing to the con- 
trary, unpopular at home, and which has, in point of 
fact, already broken down in every other institution 
which has attempted to borrow it ? Surely this cannot 
be. 

That it has so broken down, witness the statements 
of Dr. Manly's very able and comprehensive report, 
already repeatedly referred to. It there appears that, 
in the State of Virginia itself, two other colleges made 
the attempt, more than twenty years ago, to introduce 
the system of the State University. Of Washington 
College, Dr. Manly says, that " possessing an ample en- 
dowment, it had no object in the change but to increase 

5 



G6 K E P O K T . 

the number of students^ and render itself more exten- 
sively useful to the citizens of tlie State." It appears 
that, in this institution, the attempt was made, really 
and in good faith, to accommodate the instruction to 
the varying demands of learners, and so permit each 
student to " study what he chose, all that he chose, and 
nothing but what he chose" (a respect in which we 
have seen that, whatever the University of Virginia 
may promise, or whatever its admirers may promise for 
its system here, it actually makes no effort to fulfill ex- 
pectation) ; for Dr. Manly remarks that the college was 
soon overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task it had 
assumed, "it soon found that, on the new plan, its 
accustomed work had swelled into an intolerable bur- 
then. With the same number of officers as before, and 
no great increase of students^ the voluntary plan had so 
multiplied sections and subdivisions of students as to 
impose on some of the officers the necessity of hearing 
recitations incessantly, from morning till night. These 
small squads, having no definite amount of labor to per- 
form in a given time, and wanting the stimulus of num- 
bers (a serious want), dragged heavily through their 
work." It is hardly necessary to say, that after a trial of 
three or four years, an experiment so full of discourage- 
ment was entirely abandoned, and that " every thing 
was restored to its original organization," 

The other example in Virginia, cited by Dr. Manly, 
was that of Randolph Macon College, in 1832. Of the 
" department method of organization," or that of the 
University of Virginia, here introduced, Dr. Manly ob- 



REPORT. 67 

serves, " As it had a popular aspect, the officers, when 
elected men of experience, entered on its administration 
with an honest purpose, and with the zeal belonging to 
a new denominational enterprise — a fresh and specious 
experiment. Before the end of ttvo years, their affairs 
had run into great confusion^ 

It is true that Dr. Manly says of these examples, 
that " remedies might have been found for a portion of 
the evils which had developed themselves ;" by which 
the undersigned presume it to be meant that the stu- 
dents in each department might have been forced to 
conform to a manageable system of classification, or 
retire ; that, in other words, while they continued to be 
permitted to elect their departments, they might have 
been deprived of any liberty of election within tlie de- 
partments themselves — a state of things which is believed 
actually to exist in the University of Virginia ; but it is 
evident that the officers of these two colleges did not 
regard such an arrangement as an honest fulfillment of 
the promise which they had held out to the public, and 
therefore they applied no such remedy. It appears 
that in the institution last spoken of, " the more popu- 
lar departments were obliged to distribute themselves 
into four classes, involving quadruple labor to the offi- 
cers — and with results to each of these minor classes far 
from satisfactory. As subjects were taken up out of 
course, and advancements were unequal, students were 
becoming ready for graduation at different periods; 
and had the college followed out the unrestrained spon- 



68 REPORT. 

taneity of the system, tliey rniglit have been asked to 
graduate a fragment every month." 

Dr. Manly also cites the unsatisfactory results 
attained in a similar experiment at Geneva College, 
New York, in an experiment commenced about 1826. 
" Few," he says, " entered the classes on that [the open 
university] plan, who did not either retire or go into 
the regular course." 

The experiment in our own University of Alabama, 
tried for about six years, between 1831 and 1837, may 
also be fairly cited in connection with the foregoing. 
It differed from the plan of the University of Virginia 
in very little, beside withholding the full degrees of 
Bachelor and Master of Arts from the students of the 
voluntary course ; while, like that, it proposed to grad- 
uate them in the several departments separately. But 
no attempt was made here to accommodate instruction 
to the varieties of preparation of the students offering, 
by subdividing the classes; and this preparation was 
evidently in many cases very meager. The consequence 
was, the great degradation of the standard of attain- 
ment, and the growth of habits of idleness and vice, 
which terminated at last in uncontrollable insubordina- 
tion. Of this experiment, the Faculty of the Univer- 
sity, in the letter addressed to the Hon. W. K. Baylor, 
quoted earlier in the Report, speak as follows : " Did 
it [the voluntary system], while increasing the number 
of the students, elevate the character of the college, or 
promote its prosperity, or enlarge the sphere of its use- 
fulness? The reverse of all this is notoriously true. 



REPORT. €9 

Day by day, the standard of attainment in tbis college 
sunk lower and lower. Hour by hour disaffection 
grew, among students occupied but a portion of their 
time, and left for the rest to that idleness which, with 
the young and inexperienced, is but another name for 
incipient vice. The disasters which early befell this 
institution, were certainly in a measure chargeable upon 
its officers ; but we must not forget that, at the same 
time, they were in a measure attributable to the system 
which those officers were compelled to carry out." 

About the time of the publication of Dr. Manly's 
report, it was understood that a new university, on 
the entirely open plan, was going into operation at 
Cleveland, Ohio. Upon the appointment of this com- 
mittee, the undersigned lost no time in addressing a 
letter to the president of that institution, soliciting 
information in regard to its success ; but up to the date 
of this Report, they regret to say that they have 
received no reply."* 

If the entirely open university system has thus re- 
sulted in miserable failure wherever it has been tried, it 
has fared scarcely better with those schemes for the sys- 

* Since the above was written, a letter received from President Mahan states 
that, owing to some unfortunate litigation, the operations of the university were 
suspended about a year after the opening ; and that they have not yet been 
resumed, though they probably will be so in a few weeks. The results, so far as 
they went, appear to have encouraged the friends of the institution, and to have 
given them confidence in their plan. The conclusion of the letter is in these 
words: "For the reasons stated above, however, you will readily perceive that 
we cannot speak from extended experience ; and this is the only form of experi- 
ence on which safe reliance, aside from the considerations of the laws of mind and 
the wants of the age, can be placed." 



YO R E P O K T . 

tematic proscription of classical studies provided in what 
are called the " scientific courses " of several of our col- 
leges. Such courses are offered at Union College, and at 
the Rochester University, New York, and at Brown 
University, Rhode Island. Such a course, after the 
freshman year, was also, some years since, offered at 
Harvard, Mass. The result at Harvard has already 
been stated, by anticipation. Nothing remains of the 
scientific course there but a restricted liberty of election 
of certain branches of the mathematics, in place of either 
ancient or modern languages, during the junior and sen- 
ior years. The catalogue of the Rochester University 
does not distinguish to which of the courses individual 
students belong, nor give the totals in each ; but an in- 
teresting letter from Prof. Dewey, of that institution, him- 
self strongly in favor of the plan in operation there, and 
one of its originators, furnishes evidence that the scien- 
tific course has not yet secured any very firm hold upon 
the public confidence or approbation. " The two courses, 
classical and scientific," writes Prof. Dewey, " which you 
will see in the catalogue, you know are not new. Union 
College and some others have adopted similar plans, and 
find, I believe, the same difficulty in the execution. We 
cannot keep any number in the scientific course. I did 
suppose that many, who did not wish Latin and Greek, 
would avail themselves of this course. Some have done 
so, but only a few ; and many of those entering on it 
have afterwards taken Latin and Greek, and fitted 
themselves for the classical. So far as we have had 
scholars in the scientific, the plan has operated well. 



E E P O K T . 71 

N^oio we have only very few, not enough to make 
much effort necessary. The power of public opinion in 
favor of the learned languages^ and of the usual college 
course^ entirely controls our youth ; and I am pained to 
see, what I did not expect, the scientific course without 
many applicants, and even with very few. This is the 
result hereP Yet certainly it has been under the press- 
ure of a presumed force of public opinion in derogation 
of the learned languages, and in opposition to the usual 
college course, that these new systems of collegiate study 
have been originated ; and the fact that the public will 
not, after all, patronize them when presented, is a satis- 
factory demonstration that public opinion on this sub- 
ject has been misapprehended. 

Union College, in its catalogue for the third term, 
1854, has a total of two hundred and forty-one students, 
of whom nineteen only are in the scientific course. In 
the freshman class, not a single individual belongs to 
that course ; and in the junior class, there are only two. 

In regard to Brown University, the undersigned have 
no later information than that furnished by the report 
of Dr. Manly. Although, directly after their appoint- 
ment, they addressed Dr. Wayland, soliciting from him 
some statement as to how far his anticipations had been 
realized in the subsequent actual working of his system, 
they have not yet been so fortunate as to receive his 
reply. In this, and in several other instances, in which 
their inquiries remain equally unanswered, it is probable 
that the unfavorable season of the year in which they 
were made, while most of the colleges of the country 



72 REPORT. 

are resting from their labors, and their officers are prob- 
ably dispei-sed, has prevented their letters from season- 
ably reaching their destination.* According to the 
report of Dr. Manly, out of the total number of students 
in the first term of 1852-3, there were forty-five per 
cent, studying Latin, and twenty-seven per cent, study- 
ing Greek. In order to understand the significancy of 
these numbers, it must be observed that the catalogue 
embraces students of one, two, three, and four years' 
standing, while the courses of Latin and Greek study 
cover only two years. In the fourth year, the ancient 

* The commencement at Brown University was tliis year holden on the 6th 
of September, inst. According to the published reports, the degree of Master of 
Arts was conferred on twenty-three young men ; that of Bachelor of Arts on 
eight; and that of Bachelor of Philosophy on seven — the first being a four years' 
coui'se, and the other two being each courses of three years. The total number 
of graduates is, therefore, this year, only thirty-eight, of whom twenty-three take 
the classics in full ; eight take them in full or in part ; and only seven not at alL 
The suffrage at Brown University is, therefore, more than four to one in favor of 
classical learning. Yet this college makes the experiment imder circumstances of 
advantage thus signalized by Dr. Manly in his report: " How much is peculiar 
here ! The reputation and energy of the distinguished president ; the enterprising 
character of the population of New England ; and the degree to which the i-esults 
of science are immediately wanted in the new and varied employments actually 
going on around ; the fact, too, that it is the only institution already possessed of 
age and standing which has adopted these new and promising features ; — all 
together, have given that institution an increase of numbers which no other 
sphere and no other circiuiistances could supply. In a densely peopled region, 
alreadj^ educated above the average, eagerly pressing on the means of subsistence, 
of accumulation, or of fame, qiiickcned to scientific inquiry by the direct superiority 
which science gives to tlie emulous votaries of the productive arts — this institu- 
tion has opened all its treasures. Need we wonder at the effect produced by the 
glittering prize ? Sliould we anticipate similar results imder circumstances totally 
fliffercnt, we might be greatly disappointed." Yet apparently these results are 
not, after all, especially brilliant. 



E E P O E T . 73 

languages are studied by none (so it appears, at least, 
from the only catalogue at hand). In the first year, a 
large majority take Latin, and a smaller number Greek. 
In the second, out of the forty-three students (catalogue 
of 1850-51), there are only Jive who do not take one or 
the other ; and in the third, about one-third part take 
Greek, while Latin disappears. The results, therefore, 
of experiment at Brown University, so far as we have 
them, serve most explicitly to corroborate the inferences 
which have already been drawn from those previously 
examined. 

If, finally, appeal be made to the catalogue of the 
University of Virginia itself, where the utmost freedom 
is allowed the student in the selection of his studies, we 
shall find the weight of evidence still leaning the same 
way, and tending to demonstrate the fact that the peo- 
ple tvill not abandon the Latin and the Greek. In each 
of these languages, the course of that University covers 
two years only ; and it is presumed that there, as else- 
where, the two may be pursued simultaneously. Now, 
if from the total of the catalogue for 1853-54, which is 
466, we subtract 199 students entirely professional, there 
remain 267 students under the Faculty of Arts. Of 
these, 176 are in the department of ancient languages, and 
156 only in that of the modern. In mathematics there 
are 179, and in chemistry 220, many of the medical stu- 
dents taking this department ; while in the remaining de- 
partments of natural philosophy and moral philosophy 
(the latter comprehending also metaphysics, rhetoric, 
logic, criticism, and political economy), the numbers fall 



74 K E P O K T . 

as low as 106 and 112 respectively. It appears, therefore, 
that ill this University, in which students who aim at edu- 
cation remain three or four years, while the classical 
courses are completed in two, the proportion of the 
whole number (two-thirds) who, by the latest catalogue 
appear to be studying the learned languages, is so great 
as to indicate that nearly all, at one period or another, 
enroll themselves in that department. 

The undersigned feel themselves, therefore, fully 
sustained by the unvarying testimony of facts, taken 
wherever they can be found, when they assert that there 
is really none of that aversion to the learned languages, 
or distaste for them, and none of that conviction of their 
want of practical utility, of which we hear so much, 
as being widely spread and deeply rooted among the 
people. There is none, at least among those who- desire 
to be liberally educated, whether we include only such 
as submit themselves to the routine of study prescribed 
in the close colleges, or whether we leave the decision 
to the results of free volition, and confine our scrutiny to 
the most widely open universities of the Union. Nor 
is the ordinary college curriculum, as a whole, disap- 
proved by the great majority of the people, or even 
avoided by any large proportion of students themselves, 
when the choice is in their hands. " It is found," says 
Dr. Manly, " that those [colleges] whose course of studies 
is fixed and uniform for all, have adopted such a course 
that, when the largest practicable liberty of selection is 
allowed, not less than three-fourths of the students volun- 
tarily fallinto itj as on the whole the best; and that 



R E P O K T . 75 

this proportion^ ivith larger experience^ is of late years 
increasing.^'' 

That there should be, nevertheless, a good deal of 
uttered discontent with college courses of study, is not 
surprising. For thirty years or more, it has been heard, 
sometimes in one part of the country and sometimes in 
another, always dwelling upon the same alleged evils — 
the tediousness and long duration of the course ; the 
unpractical character of the studies ; the sad waste of 
time expended over classic lore and the higher mathe- 
matics ; the absolute neglect to impart that training 
which shall prepare the student, as he emerges from the 
institution, to grapple at once and familiarly with the 
affairs of life. But in this there is nothing: which ouo;ht 
to surprise. " With the present century," says Dr. Way- 
land, in his report of 1850, "a new era dawned upon 
the world. A host of new sciences arose, all holding 
important relations to the progress of civilization. Here 
was a whole people in an entirely novel position. Al- 
most the whole nation was able to read. Mind had 
been quickened to intense energy by the events of the 
Revolution. The spirit of self-reliance had gained 
strength by the result of that contest. A country rich 
in every form of capability had just come into their 
possession. Its wealth was inexhaustible ; and its ad- 
aptation to the production of most of the great staples 
of commerce unsurpassed. All that was needed to de- 
velop its resources, was well-directed labor. But labor 
only can be skillfully directed by science ; and the sci- 
ences now coming into notice were precisely those which 



76 REPORT. 

the condition of the country rendered indispensable to 
success. That such a people could he satisfied with the 
teaching of Gree\ Latin, and the elements of the Mathe- 
matics^ was plainly impossihley Here, then, is the 
source of an early dissatisfaction with colleges, against 
which, as Dr. Wayland proceeds to show, these institu- 
tions endeavored to bear up — not by abandoning what 
they had taught before, but by " adding science after 
science to the course, as fast as the pressure from without 
seemed to require it." But, in the mean time, they have 
not extended the duration of the period of instruction. 
Had they done so, they " must have encountered the 
common prejudice in favor of a four years' course." 
In consequence of this, according to Dr. Wayland, into 
the particulars of whose calculation it is unnecessary to 
descend, the average length of time which can be de- 
voted to each several subject of study (apart from the 
Greek and Latin) in American colleges, is but a fraction 
over six weeks. Hence has arisen a new dissatisfaction, 
w^hich has had its special and local manifestations of act- 
ivity, at different times and in different quarters, during 
the last half-century. It is, in the first place, a natural 
outbreak of that restless spirit of the age, which chafes 
impatiently with the desire to grasp results without sub- 
mitting willingly to the labor necessary to prepare 
them. But it is, in the second place, a feeling of well- 
founded distrust of the possibility of teaching with thor- 
oughness so much as is now attempted, in so little time. 
And in attempting so much, it is to be apprehended 
that colleges have themselves done a great deal to turn 



REPORT. 77 

away public attention from tlie true and fundamental 
object of collegiate education, and to encourage the idea 
that it is their duty to train youth with special refer- 
ence to what are to be their pursuits in life. No such 
encouragement is necessary from such a source. The 
idea is, to far too great a degree, spontaneously current. 
And to this, after all, with perhaps that entire but very 
prevalent misconception of the distinction between edu- 
cation and instruction, which so often manifests itself in 
what is written on this subject, may be mainly ascribed 
the earnestness with which the university system of this 
country has been so perseveringly assailed. " A mere 
knowledge of facts and things," says President Sparks, 
" is too often looked upon as the ultimate end of educa- 
tion ; whereas it is little less than an accident^ the nat- 
ural result of the discipline and training requisite to 
form an educated man. It depends on the single faculty 
of memory, which often exists with surprising activity, 
where the other faculties are languid or obtuse. Knowl- 
edge oipi'inciples arid causes is the fruit of experience, 
observation, thought, solid and abiding, deeply wrought 
into the mind till it becomes an assimilated part of the 
intellectual man. This is the work of education, and 
its chief work." 

The unreasonableness of expecting our colleges, 
whose, proper business is, and has been from the begin- 
ning, to do this work of education proper, to provide 
also, in the brief space of time allotted to them with 
their pupils, that professional or technical training which 
shall prepare them to engage directly in the business 



78 REPORT. 

of life, has been already sufficiently considered. But to 
what has been said may very properly be added the 
important consideration suggested by the question, 
How much, after all, could the college accomplish, pro- 
vided it were converted altogether into a school for the 
study of professions and of the practical arts of life? 
Received, as the students of all American colleges are 
received, with a very humble preparation, and in most 
instances with no established mental habits, or with 
very bad ones, they are not fit — at least as a general 
rule — to be directly introduced to the study of those 
professions or arts which are to occupy them in actual 
life. If it be replied here, that the proposition is not 
necessarily to introduce them to those studies thus 
dii'ectly, but only to make their elementary training of 
such as are manifestly subsidiary or fundamental to 
them, the rejoinder may be that the entire college 
course contains nothing which is not subsidiary to the 
successful study of any profession ; and that, if the 
intention be to indicate those studies which have a 
direct affinity with the intended pursuit, the objection 
to their exclusive use is the serious one, that they will 
inevitably prevent the equal development of the facul- 
ties, and end in producing an unequally balanced mind. 
Yet, waiving every objection of this nature, what, after 
all, can the college do, at best or at worst, toward turn- 
ing out a practical man ? While time lasts, the farmer 
will continue to be made in the field, the manufacturer 
in the shop, the merchant in the counting-room, the 
civil engineer in the midst of the actual operations of 



R E P O E T . 70 

his science. The well-educated student, when he re- 
ceives his diploma, is fitted, indeed, to enter upon any of 
these scenes of labor, and is capable, by his own inde- 
pendent effort, of perfecting himself in the knowledge 
and the skill which they demand ; but to expect, by 
any kind of college training whatever, to furnish him 
with the ability or inspire him with the confidence to 
stand forth as a master of any one of these or similar 
professions, is entirely unreasonable and preposterous. 

There can be little doubt that much of the bias in 
favor of open universities for the instruction of youth 
and men in all descriptions of knowledge, has grown 
out of the vague and generally erroneous notions float- 
ing through the country, in regard to the character of 
the universities of Germany. These institutions are 
substantially professional schools ; and if any of their 
students are engaged in pursuits merely literary or 
scientific, those pursuits are of an order much less 
elementary than such as occupy the young men in our 
colleges. "The institution in Germany," observe the 
Faculty of Yale College, in their report already quoted, 
" which corresponds most nearly to our college, is the 
gymnasium. The universities are mostly occupied with 
professional students. In Halle, for example, of eleven 
hundred students, all except sixty are engaged in the 
study of theology, law, and medicine." As to the 
actual amount of instruction given in the gymnasia, the 
unpublished pamphlet of Bishop Potter, mentioned in a 
different part of this Report, cites, from the Report of 
Prof Bache, on the State of Education in Europe, the 



80 REPORT. 

examples of three Prussian gymnasia, two in Berlin and 
one at Pforta, " as representatives of tlie instruction of 
the kingdom, preparatory to tlie university course." 
From these examples it appears, that " the pupil in two 
of these German gymnasia studies nearly if not quite as 
much mathematics as in our [Pennsylvania] University, 
and makes respectable proficiency in Physics, Physical 
Geography, Mechanics, and Chemistry. In that which 
concedes the least time to science (Pforta), he is taken 
into Conic Sections, the Diophantine Analysis, Trig- 
onometry, Physics, Magnetism, <fec." And in regard to 
Latin and Greek, and also Hebrew, the instruction is 
more thorough than is probably furnished in any of our 
colleges.* No argument, therefore, can be drawn from 
the educational institutions of Germany to ours ; or if 
such a one should be attempted, it ought to be rather 
for the creation of a new and higher description of 
schools, to which none but those who have completed 
the usual course of college study should be admitted, 
rather than for the conversion of our existing colleges 
into what in Germany would be mere nondescripts, 
having the form of the university and the grade of the 
gymnasium. 

There is, moreover, reason to believe that the word 
university, in its popular acceptation in this country, 
has had something to do with promoting the bias of 
which mention has just been made. This word, says 
Sir "William Hamilton, " in the language of the middle 
ages, was applied either loosely to any understood class 

* Princeton Review, Oct. 1852, and Oct. 1863. 



REPORT. 81 

of persons ; or strictly (in the acceptation of the Roman 
law) to a public incorporation, more especially (as 
equivalent with communitas) to the members of a 
municipality, or to the members of a ' general study ' : " 
— studium generate^ " the oldest word for an unexclusive 
institution of higher education." Thus the name uni- 
versity denoted the entire body of persons engaged in 
study, under a given organization, and not, as it is now 
commonly understood, the entire circle of possible sub- 
jects of study : — it was Universitas doctorum et schola- 
rium^ and not Universitas scientiarum. It further 
appears, according to the same authority, that "it was 
the common custom to erect a university in only 
certain Faculties ; and not unfrequently a concession of 
the others was subsequently added." Instances are 
cited of universities established without any Faculty 
of Arts, and of others in which one or more of the 
higher Faculties were originally wanting. The mistake 
in regard to the meaning of this word, which in Eng- 
land has led to consequences of serious practical import- 
ance, and occasioned the agitation of legal questions of 
moment, has in this country been productive of the less 
grave but still annoying evil of aiding to promote those 
movements which have had for their object the break- 
ing up of the established collegiate system. It may 
seem strange that a mere question of verbal definition 
should exercise any important influence in a question of 
this kind. To a thoughtful mind it would seem that, if 
the common acceptation of the word were a correct 
one, then in its application to the institutions which we 
6 



K E P O K T . 



call universities it is a misnomer, capable of being cor- 
rected by tlie simplest of all possible processes, the 
adoption of a new name; but by no means involving 
the absurd necessity of remodeling the institution to 
suit the word. It has nevertheless had its effect ; and 
this rarely fails to be perceptible, in any argument put 
forward in favor of changes like that which is now 
urged upon the University of Alabama. 

In conclusion, the undersigned cannot but believe, 
that, on questions of this kind, some consideration is 
due to the weight of authority. The most eminent 
educators of youth in America, are almost with one 
voice opposed to a system like that of the Univei'sity of 
Virginia, for American colleges. The Faculty of Yale 
College, at the time of the publication of their ably 
argued letter to the trustees of that institution, from 
which repeated quotations have been made in this 
E-eport, embraced some of the most distinguished and 
experienced instructors whom this country has pro- 
duced ; among whom we may especially signalize Presi- 
dent Day, and Professors Kingsley, Silliman, Goodrich, 
and Olmsted. 

It is certain that no college in the United States has 
ever commanded a higher respect, or possessed a more 
extended popularity, than this. And it is remarkable 
that though it was among the first — perhaps quite the 
first — to take a public and decided stand in opposition 
to the views of those who would break up the existing 
college system, and especially of those who would dis- 
card the learned languages from the curriculum of 



REPORT. 83 

college study, yet no period of its whole history has 
been distinguished by a more signal prosperity than 
that which has since elapsed. At no time have the 
Faculty of that celebrated institution shown the slight- 
est disposition to descend from the high position which 
they assumed in 1828 ; and a recent letter received 
from Dr. Woolsey, the accomplished scholar who at 
present presides over it, accords entirely with the views 
which have been expressed in this Report. "We have 
ever," writes Dr. Woolsey, " been averse to the system 
pursued at Charlottesville, on the ground principally 
that students, at that stage of their education when 
they are in college, are incompetent to choose what 
they ought to study ; and on the ground that, at that 
season, there is need of drilling and close examination — 
of a daily responsibility — habits of study being yet un- 
formed, and immediate motives being needed to put 
young minds at work. It is surprising how much 
stronger a motive acts in professional study than in 
preparatory ; the student in the former case feeling 
that success in life is in a good degree connected with 
his diligence, and by no means so much in the latter. 
Hence we are disinclined to an optional and to a lecture 
system. We would introduce both sparingly, and 
toward the close of a college life. And indeed a lec- 
ture system, without frequent examination, is of small 
account." 

Dr. Woolsey then proceeds to consider the objections 
which are usually urged against the existing system. 
He observes, " There are two principal ones, 1st, that 



84: K E r O K T . 

students will not study what they do not like ; and 2d, 
that there is an inaptitude in some for certain branches. 
To which may be added, that the course from the first 
may be accommodated, on the optional system, to the 
profession chosen. In reply to the last objection, we 
say that the discipline of languages and mathematics, 
and of moral science, is too e\ndently needed by all to 
allow us to doubt that it is, in the main, the correct 
system. The one-sidedness of men educated only (for 
example) for and in physical science, is quite apparent. 

"There is real force in the other objections. Stu- 
dents cannot, as you must know, sometimes, be found 
to take hold of mathematics or Greek ; and a college 
life does some, therefore, but little good. Others are 
incompetent, or nearly so, to master one of the dis- 
ciplinary studies. The question arises, Is it desirable to 
modify the system for this sort of minds ? How much 
will they gain on any system ? Many of them very 
little. For the rest, I would have a certain optional 
system, say after half an academical life is over, in 
which hard mathematics could be chewed by those who 
don't like Greek, and hard Greek by those who don't 
like mathematics. You will see that we are old Fogies 
here. JSfolumus leges Anglice muta/rer 

The position of Hon. Edward Everett, former Presi- 
dent of Harvard University, on this question, as indi- 
cated by himself, has already been given. That of Dr. 
Walker, the present able head of the same University, 
is expressed in a letter holding the following decisive 
language : " We are far from wishing to prejudge the 



B E P O K T. 85 

result of tlie experiments whicli other colleges are 
trying. Our own experience, as far as it went, has 
satisfied us that, in American colleges, neither the age, 
nor the proficiency, nor the number of the students, nor 
the number of the teachers, are such as to make the 
introduction of an unrestricted elective system either 
advisable or practicable. Merely to arrange the hours 
of recitation on this plan so that they shall not inter- 
fere, and yet secure to each student his share of atten- 
tion and keep him properly employed, will be found to 
be an almost insuperable difficulty. Most of the objects 
aimed at by the voluntary system, are more effectually 
and satisfactorily reached, as we think, by scientific 
and professional schools connected with the college 
proper." 

Bishop Potter, of Pennsylvania, whose large expe- 
rience as an officer and a trustee of several colleges, and 
whose signal ability and ardent zeal, displayed in the 
cause of education, entitle his opinion to the highest 
respect — who, it may be added, is also an earnest advo- 
cate of the open university system, in its proper place ; 
and that is, " where young men, older and better 
trained than our ordinary collegians, with more active 
desire for improvement," and " where graduates of our 
colleges, and other young men bent on gaining knowl- 
edge," can be relied on to apply for its advantages, — 
concludes an interesting letter on this general subject, 
in these impressive words : — 

"The attempt to popularize a college, is too often 
an attempt to extinguish its collegiate character, and 



86 K E P O K T . 

transform it into a liigh school. The classics are not 
taught as they should be in our colleges ; and the great 
reason is, that too much time is given to other studies. 
In connection with the moral sciences, they are still, in 
ray judgment — when well taught — the best gymnastic 
for the production of a high culture, such as we must 
have in the United States, if we mean to advance the 
great work of Christian civilization, and raise up divines, 
statesmen, and patriots, such as we need, perhaps, more 
than any other nation in the world." 

Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen, long Chancellor of 
the New York City University, and now President of 
Rutgers College, New. Jersey, speaks thus: "The plan 
of remodeling our colleges for tlie times^ is, in my poor 
judgment, very unpromising to the interests of a sound 
education. It should be borne in mind, that the old 
time-honored system furnishes to the student the ele- 
ments of every art and science that the modern activity 
of the mind has called into prominent notice. The 
benefits to be derived from classical studies (the dead 
languages, as they are called), are so rich and various, 
that it would be a calamity to put them aside. They 
discipline the mind and strengthen its powers, while 
they purify the taste. And moreover, we must rely 
upon them for the knowledge of our own language. 
The classics, like the works of the great artists of other 
times in painting and sculpture, are to be studied for 
their purity, and will abundantly recompense the stu- 
dent. I hope they may still have a full share of the 
college course. They should be studied, if never opened 



REPORT. 87 

again in after life. Much of the benefit will live after 
them." 

Dr. Thornwell, President of S. C. College, in his 
letter to Gov. Manning, already quoted from, expresses 
himself on the subject of two changes which had been 
proposed in that institution — the first being to introduce, 
substantially, the Virginia scheme ; and the second to 
permit students to confine themselves to special branches 
of study — as follows : " In the first place, young men 
are incompetent to pronounce beforehand what studies 
are subjectively the most beneficial. It requires those 
who have experienced the disciplinary power of diffe- 
rent studies, to determine their relative value. Only a 
scholar can say what will make a scholar. The expe- 
rience of the world has settled down upon a certain 
class and order of studies ; and the verdict of ages and 
generations is not to be set aside by the caprices, whims, 
or prejudices of those who are not even able to compre- 
hend the main end of education. In the next place, if 
our undergraduates were competent to form a judg- 
ment, their natural love of indolence and ease would, in 
the majority of cases, lead them to exclude those very 
studies which are the most improving, precisely because 
they are so ; that is, because in themselves and in the 
method of teaching them, they involve a degree and 
intensity of mental exercise which is positively painful. 
Self-denial is not natural to man ; and he manifests but 
little acquaintance with human nature, who presumes, 
as a matter of course, that the will will choose what the 
judgment commends. Video melioi^a prohoque^ deteriora 



K E P O R T . 



sequo?; is more pre-eminently true of tlie young than of 
the old. They are the creatures of impulse. * * * 
Easy exercises are preferred, simply because they do not 
tax the mind. The practical problem with the mass of 
students is — the least work and the easiest done. Is it 
easy ? Is it short ? these are the questions which are first 
asked about a lesson. I must therefore consider any 
attempt to relax the compulsory feature of the college 
course, as an infallible expedient for degrading educa- 
tion. The college will cease to train. It may be a 
place for literary triflers, but a place for students it 
cannot be." 

And again : " With respect to the other change, that 
of allowing students under certain circumstances, to 
pursue a partial course, it is evidently contradictory to 
the fundamental aim of the college. These students 
are not seeking knowledge for the sake of discipline, 
but with reference to ulterior uses. They come not to 
be trained to tlmik^ but to learn to act in definite 
departments of exertion. It is professional^ not liberal 
education which they want. The want, I acknowledge, 
should be gratified ; it is a demand which should be 
supplied. But the college is not the place to do it. 
That was founded for other purposes, and it is simply 
preposterous to abrogate its constitution out of conces- 
sions to a necessity, because the necessity happens to be. 
real. What therefore ought to be done is, not to 
change the nature of the college, but, leaving that un- 
touched* to do its own work, to organize schools with 
special reference to this class of wants." 



K E P O K T 



The following emphatic expression of opinion, is from 
Dr. Church, whose great experience at the head of the 
University of Georgia, where the voluntary system in 
one form, has long been subject of experiment, entitles 
it to much weight : " Far the larger number of students 
who enter the colleges of the United States are, I ap- 
prehend, too young to be thrown upon their own respon- 
sibility in a matter of so much importance as their edu- 
cation. They are incapable of judging what is best for 
their mental and moral culture. Leave them to elect 
the studies which they will pursue, and much the larger 
portion will take what they consider the easiest and 
pleasantest course. Leave them to study or not to 
study, and most will prefer the pleasant circle of friends, 
to the labor and self-denial necessary to profitable men- 
tal culture. * * * Study is labor ; and but few will, 
at the age at which most of our college students enter 
our institutions, bend the energies of their minds to the 
acquisition of knowledge, if left wholly to themselves. 
The Virginia system was intended, I suppose, by its 
illustrious founder, for men — not hoys. It would answer 
well for our best scholars, who wish to prosecute their 
studies after having gone through a good collegiate 
course. Till the young man is about twenty-one, I am 
of opinion that it is the great business of education to 
develop and to properly discipline his intellectual and 
moral powers and susceptibilities. I apprehend that our 
usual course of study is as well calculated to do this as 
any w^hich has yet been suggested. And if, in the com- 
mon college course, and under the usual discipline, all 



90 REPORT. 

cannot be influenced to apply themselves in such a man- 
ner as to be greatly benefited, a mucli larger number 
will than under a merely voluntary or elective system." 

Dr. Church, it will be seen, speaks of the elective 
system, as if the uncontrolled election of studies were 
vested in the student himself. It has been sometimes 
assumed that the manifest injudiciousness of such an 
arrangement might be obviated, by putting the election 
in the hands of the parent, instead of those of the stu- 
dent. In nine cases out of ten, however, this regulation 
is experimentally proved to be inoperative; and the 
result has been found to be precisely what would have 
occurred without it. The election is always^ in any 
institution which allows election at all, in the parent's 
hands. If he takes the interest he ought to take in his 
son's education, he will use it without being required to 
do so by any college law ; if not, he will use it to give 
the sanction of parental authority to the student's 
choice. 

Dr. Swain, the distinguished President of the Uni- 
versity of North Carolina, is no less decided in favor of 
the views which this Report has presented, than any 
other of the distinguished authorities already cited. 
" Mr. Jefferson's original conception of the University of 
Virginia," writes Dr. Swain, " with the exception that it 
was somewhat in advance of the age, was an admirable 
one. His design was to establish a system of schools, 
in which young men who had completed the usual 
course of scholastic training, might have an opportunity 
to review all their studies, and push their researches in 



REPORT. 91 

every branch of literature and science to a greater 
extent than was practicable elsewhere. Experience has 
shown, that there is too little wealth and too little 
learned leisure in the country to afford the requisite 
patronage to an institution of so high a grade. There 
may be, by the close of the present century, but there 
is not now. Instead of scholars resorting to that insti- 
tution to enlarge their attainments in philology and the 
severer sciences, young men imperfectly acquainted 
with Webster's spelling-book press there, to enter upon 
the elements of arithmetic and English grammar. A 
few, and but a small proportion, go with better prepar- 
ation and more extended views, become candidates for 
degrees, and make valuable attainments. The Univer- 
sity has unquestionably rendered eminent service to the 
country, by training a few ripe scholars ; but whether 
the good is not counterbalanced by the evil inflicted, in 
sending forth a multitude of sciolists bedizened with 
her livery, is an inquiry entitled to more consideration 
than it has received. The success of the institution in 
securing patronage, is not unfrequently over-estimated. 
With all the advantages of prestige attached to the 
names of Jefferson and Virginia, with an ample endow- 
ment, an able Faculty, in the midst of a numerous popu- 
lation and great wealth, a comparison of catalogues 
during the last twenty years will probably satisfy you 
that the number of undergraduates proper has not been 
greater there than here. It is the schools of law and 
medicine, which have given the great prominence in 
numbers, and not the regular academic corps." 



92 REPORT. 

And, ill regard to what is said of the demand for 
"practical education," Dr. Swain observes, — "In my 
judgment, no system of education can claim to be prac- 
tical, in this country and at the present age of the 
world, of which thorough instruction in the learned 
languages and the mathematics does not constitute the 
substratum. You may add any amount of attainment 
in modern languages and natural and experimental sci- 
ence, that increasing wealth and leisure may permit; 
but the former can never be dispensed with." 

In fine, the President of our own University, after 
patiently and laboriously looking into all this subject, 
only two or three years ago, at the request of the Board 
of Trustees, announces the conclusion to which the 
investigation has driven him, in the following passages 
of his report : " It is obvious that, while experiments 
among the colleges, for meeting the public demand, 
have been innumerable, the new system (as it is called) 
has not generally secured the approbation of educators." 
"Voluntariness in the selection of studies cannot be 
complete and absolute under any system." "Those 
[colleges] which aim at specific adaptation to the busi- 
ness of life in the courses of study, and lay claim to the 
greatest voluntariness and the nearest approximation to 
the wants of the age, and accommodation to the indi- 
vidual, are obliged, ^^rac^zm?/^^, to admit that a specific 
education, without the main features of the old college 
course, is necessarily one-sided and imperfect." " The 
' partial course,' which does not lead to a degree, is an 
acknowledged failure everywhere, not much sought, 



E E P O R T . 93 

and attended witli but little satisfaction to any party. 
The creation of a new degree whicli may be reached 
without classical attainments, and the separation of old 
degrees so as to admit of less classical study in some 
cases than formerly, are expedients intended to apply 
the stimulus of collegiate honors without the aid of the 
inspiration drawn from classic fountains. As experi- 
ments, they are too recent and too limited to show the 
effect on members or mental culture." And finally: 
" As an expedient for increasing numbers in this insti- 
tution (extending its benefits to a greater number of 
the citizens of the State) a change of organization is 
deemed questionable. * '^ * The statistics in this 
report have already furnished proof of the fact that 
efforts of this kind, intended to popularize institutions, 
have not replenished them ; that costly arrangements, 
adapted both to general and individual wants, have 
attracted but a scanty increase; while, in a noted 
instance, the fullest classes have been those of the old 
college system." 

That the weight of authority, no less than the deduc- 
tions of reason, is entirely opposed to the expediency of 
a change in the college system of the country so radical 
as is proposed for this University, cannot, therefore, be 
questioned. Yet that the system admits of improve- 
ment, its friends have nowhere attempted to deny. 
The great burthen of studies which at present presses 
on the course, the evil of which Dr. Wayland has so 
ably exhibited, ought in some manner to be disposed of. 
We must come back to the simple idea of the original 



94 REPORT. 

colleGre, and endeavor to restrict these institutions to 
the discharge of their proper function of education j 
leaving mainly to special institutions connected with 
colleges, as suggested in the letter of Dr. Walker, or 
separate from them, the business of supplying facts, 
information, knowledge for its uses — that is to say, all 
instruction designed simply as such. Bishop Potter, in 
his remarks at the close of the debate on college sys- 
tems at the Cleveland convention, indicates what to the 
undersigned appears to be the course which true wis- 
dom would dictate. ""Were the speaker," he said, 
" called to reconstruct the course of studies in colleges, 
his motto would be midtum^ non multa. He would 
greatly diminish the number of studies which all must 
pursue. These he would have taught for a much lon- 
ger time, much more thoroughly, and in a more scholar- 
like way. Certain other branches, such as Natural His- 
tory, tfec, he would malce accessible to all, through the 
ablest and most brilliant professors, delivering short 
courses of lectures on the rudiments. Other branches 
he would reserve for those who had special qualifica- 
tions, who would pursue them eagerly and spontane- 
ously." The idea of Prof Potter, in regard to the lec- 
tures on special subjects, above hinted at, is that the 
most eminent professors in these branches might lec- 
ture, by arrangement, in many colleges to which they 
are not specially attached ; his impression (a very just 
one) being, as he expresses it in a letter, that, " to a 
young man who has reached the last year of his college 
life, one month of intercourse with a great master in 



E E P O E T . 95 

any branch, is worth more, in the way of permanent 
incitement and impulse, than many months of study 
with an inferior teacher." But leaving this topic aside, 
it is evident that the plan which he suggests for the 
relief of colleges under the oppressive weight of the 
great mass of matter which they attempt to teach, is 
the only true one, the only one from which relief can 
come. The sole alternative is to lengthen the period of 
collegiate training and instruction — an alternative to 
which, evidently, the people will not submit. If, in the 
progress of time, it shall become possible so to elevate 
the requisitions for admission into college, as to throw 
back much of the elementary training upon the prepar- 
atory schools, and if these schools, in this country, shall 
ever be brought up to the grade of the German gym- 
nasia, or anywhere near it, then indeed we may reason- 
ably hope to teach in our colleges, and teach well, all 
which we now attempt to teach, and it is to be feared 
too often teach ill. That state of things can only super- 
vene by degrees, and can only be a reality in the 
distant future. It is our business to legislate for the 
present. 

In regard to our own University, in case a reorgan- 
ization of the plan of instruction be resolved on, the 
following, in the opinion of the undersigned, are the 
principles according to which it should be regulated : — 

1. To prescribe a definite curriculum of study, 
designed as a mental discipline, to extend over the 
entire four years, and to which all regular candidates 
for graduation are to be required to conform. In this, 



REPORT. 



however, to include only those branches of study, or 
certainly very few but those, which, by the consent of 
the learned of all ages, are entitled to })e regarded as 
the best instruments for evolving and exercising the 
powers of the mind. 

2. To embrace all the remaining studies of the 
course, which are thus thrown out, in a group, out of 
which the Faculty may, at the proper time, select such 
as seem fittest to the intellectual wants of each indi- 
vidual student, as ascertained by the observation of his 
tastes, mental habits, and actual attainments during the 
earlier years of study ; and to provide for his instruc- 
tion in these, without exacting from him, as at present, 
attention to the whole number. 

In the application of these principles, it seems to the 
undersigned advisable that, during the first two years 
of the course, no study should be introduced which is 
not obligatory upon all the students. The present 
arrangement of the hours at which the daily exercises 
occur, need not therefore of necessity be interfered 
with. Whether or not that is the best arrangement, 
the undersigned do not undertake to pronounce ; but at 
present they see no reason to recommend any alteration 
in this respect, in regard to this part of the course. 
Should, however, any portion of the studies of the 
junior and senior year, or of either, be made elective, 
it will probably be found convenient to assign recita- 
tions or lectures for these classes in some branches at 
other hours, additional to those fixed by the present 
regulations, and without disturbing the latter. What 



REPORT. 97 

particular distribution of time may be best adapted to 
secure all the ends aimed at by this new system of 
instruction, it will perhaps be best to leave to the more 
mature deliberation of the Faculty. A table of exer- 
cises, or roster^ herewith submitted, may be regarded 
as simply in the light of a suggestion for the purpose 
of inviting amendment, than as a positive recom- 
mendation. 

Should a reorganization of the plan of instruction 
on these principles be resolved upon, it becomes im- 
portant to decide what studies shall be placed in the 
elective group. To this class, it appears to the under- 
signed, that there can be no hesitation in referring, — 

1st. All such as deal principally in facts of observa- 
tion ; 

2d. Such as require a peculiar natural aptitude for 
their successful prosecution ; and 

3d. The study of the languages, ancient or modern, 
pursued beyond the limit prescribed by the obligatory 
course. 

Under the first head may be included all the 
branches of natural history, and also geology, 
mineralogy, physiology, meteorology, and, possibly, a 
second course of chemistry. 

Under the second may be embraced all the 
branches of the mathematics which rest upon the 
algebraic, or symbolic, method (elementary algebra 
excepted), and embracing in the existing course, 
algebra applied to geometry, analytical geometry, 
7 



98 K E P O K T . 

and the calculus, difl^rential and integral; to which 
may be added spherical trigonometry. 

The third requires no specifications. 

The undersigned design to enter into no argument 
as to the propriety of the distinctions which they have 
thus made between the subjects now overloading the 
curriculum of college study. Since it is an admitted 
fact that no student can possibly now be thorough in 
all of them, limited as he is to the very few weeks 
which can only be given to each, according to present 
arrangements, it can be no serious objection to the pro- 
posed plan to say, that it must necessarily cut off every 
student from something. That is very true ; but it is 
equally true that the entirely voluntary system permits 
him to do the same for himself; and what is more, 
makes it nearly certain that he will do it, while it fails 
to guaranty to him a systematic intellectual training at 
all. 

The studies which will remain obligatory upon 
every individual, after those above specified are ex- 
cluded from the regular course, are such as are 
universally regarded as furnishing the best discipline 
of the mind and the most equable exercise of the 
various faculties ; and such as, at the same time, by a 
consent almost universal, and quite so if we except the 
learned languages from the list, are esteemed as being 
in themselves attainments absolutely indispensable to 
every man of education. Moreover, in regard to the 
learned languages, it has already been shown, that the 
dissent just hinted at, is actually more imaginary than 



REPORT 



99 



real, that it is limited to a very small number of per- 
sons, and that in this number we find hardly a single 
name of any authority either in the great field of 
education, or in the world of letters. 

By the adoption, then, of a system of instruction 
founded on the principles above stated, and in its prac- 
tical application securing instruction, in any of the 
branches of knowledge which usually form a part of 
every collegiate course, to those and those only who are 
likely to derive positive profit from their study, while 
all are equally subjected to that thorough education of 
the mind which it is the proper business as it was the 
original design of the college to bestow, it appears to 
the undersigned that whatever is objectionable in the 
existing system may be eliminated, without putting at 
hazard the sound prosperity of the institution by 
changes unnecessarily larrge and startling, and which, 
whatever confidence in their wisdom their immediate 
advocates and friends may entertain, are certainly 
regarded with anxious distrust by a large proportion of 
our most judicious and thoughtful fellow-citizens. 

If along with the change here proposed, some atten- 
tion be paid to certain matters of detail, in regard to 
which amendment appears to be possible, the efficiency 
of the whole system, in the opinion of the undersigned, 
cannot fail to be materially improved. The honors and 
distinctions now awarded by the University, depend on 
a method of estimating scholarship by giving a nu- 
merical value to every performance, and preserving a 
record of every exercise corresponding to its adjudged 



100 REPORT. 

merit. To the undersigned this method appears to be 
faulty in two particulars : first, it is a departure from 
the sound principle on which the prerogative of grant- 
ing degrees was designed to be exercised by univer- 
sities — and that is, that none should be admitted to the 
honor but such as should be found, by thorough trial, 
to be actually possessed of the required attainments at 
the time of receiving the degree ; and secondly, it does 
nothing to stimulate, and in fact it does sometimes 
appear to deaden, that honorable pride of scholarship, 
which, to the generous youth, is one of the most power- 
ful incitements to intellectual effort. 

In regard to the first particular, it may be said that 
the present marking system tends to induce a habit of 
" studying up " or " cramming " for the immediate reci- 
tation, without regard to such a thorough understanding 
of the subject, as shall fix it permanently in the mind. 
And to this may be added, that, by making the recita- 
tion of the day or of the hour the all-important objecty 
its influence is to interfere with the formation of com- 
prehensive or connected views of a subject of study as 
a whole, or the mutual dependency of its parts upon 
each other, but to present it rather as a succession of 
detached and independent doses of knowledge, each to 
be taken by itself, without regard to what precedes or 
follows. The consequence is, that by the aid of a toler- 
able memory, a plausible display may be made at the 
moment of recitation, when, a few weeks after, it would 
be difficult for the student to recall any part of what he 
had so glibly retailed at first. Nor is this absolutely 



E E P O K T . 101 

the worst consequence whicli, in some instances, pro- 
ceeds from the same cause. Artifices are often devised 
by students averse to labor, by wliicli to make a false 
exhibit of knowledge, and thus secure from the teacher 
a high estimate for a performance which possesses no 
merit at all. Concealed papers, interlined books, aid 
secretly obtained at the moment of recitation by the 
prompting of a fellow-student, exercises and composi- 
tions plagiarized from books, problems and demon- 
strations obtained from better scholars, and many 
similar expedients, enable a student often to secure an 
apparently high grade of scholarship upon the record, 
when at the same time, his real attainments are very 
low. These evils, which seem in both cases to be con- 
sequences which the system directly encourages, may, in 
the opinion of the undersigned, be both of them re- 
moved by a slight alteration of the mode of determ- 
ining grade in scholarship. Let this depend to a 
degree almost exclusive of any other test, upon the peri- 
odical and final examinations, and very little, if at all, 
upon the record of daily recitation. It is important 
that such a record should still be kept, that uniformity 
of attention to study may be secured, and that the 
negligent and grossly deficient may be admonished, or 
required to withdraw ; but in the valuation of substan- 
tial scholarship, let thorough examination be the prin- 
cipal as it is the only sure test of merit. If, also, to 
this be added the suffrages of the students themselves, 
in regard to the comparative rank of their classmates in 
literary and scientific attainments, as at Yale College, 



102 K E P O R T . 

and as suggested by Sir William Hamilton, in his ideal 
of " Oxford as it might be," we should offer to youth 
one of the highest inducements that could be offered to 
lead them to covet a reputation with their fellow-stu- 
dents, who know them thoroughly, for genuine scholar- 
ship, instead of striving, as now, to secure on the books 
of the Faculty a record of merit, founded on a basis, at 
the least illusive, if not fraudulent. 

The habit of looking to a distant, and not to an im- 
mediate responsibility, will secure more earnest study, 
and a more sincere desire and determination to under- 
stand principles, rather than commit to the memory, 
facts. It will, moreover, be attended with the knowl- 
edge and conviction that the responsibility is a real one, 
which (if the examinations are properly conducted) no 
art can evade, and for which there must be a substan- 
tial and real preparation. 

In order effectually to secure these ends, it may be 
deemed desirable to give to the examinations a greater 
duration than at present, and for this purpose to throw 
all the three term examinations together at the end of 
the year ; which will provide for an annual examination 
of three weeks — a duration which might, perhaps, be 
profitably extended to a month. And in addition to 
this, a biennial examination might be held, as at Yale 
College, and a final one at the end of the four years, at 
which the classes should be examined upon all the 
studies they had pursued from the beginning up to 
that time. This would make the distant responsibility 
a reality so serious as to necessitate the attainment of 



REPORT. 103 

genuine, instead of seeming scholarsliip, and would 
remove tlie temptations whicli now exist, to fall into 
habits of systematic evasion of study. 

There remains one other particular, in regard to 
which a change appears to be desirable. According to 
the rules at present existing in this University, if a stu- 
dent fails in the performance of any particular exercise, 
on account of sickness, or other sufficient excuse, he is 
permitted to prepare and perform this exercise by him- 
self separately, and is entitled to receive credit for the 
performance, precisely as if it had been accomplished in 
its due season. Should the principle of estimating schol- 
arship according to the recorded marks of the term 
exercises be abandoned, then this regulation, as depend- 
ent on it, may as well be abandoned likewise. But if 
otherwise, it is still to be desired that this, as the under- 
signed believe, worse than useless rule, should be dis- 
pensed with by itself. In the first place, the student 
ought to be habituated in college, to contemplate the 
stern truth that men's misfortunes will never be accepted 
in life, as a reason why their competitors should pause 
and wait for them, or should offer them a second trial, 
in the race for the world's distinctions. By sickness, or 
other misfortune, the student loses the benefit of a per- 
formance which might have counted in his favor. Be it 
so — let him accept the loss like a man. Another day 
it may befall his rival. And it is well to learn, by 
small mishaps like these, to bear those greater ills which 
may lie before us in the world's ceaseless struggle, 
where the race too often is to the swift, and the bat- 



104: K E P O R T . 

tie to the strong. More than this, it is well to culti- 
vate that energetic spirit which scorns to droop at every 
trivial pain, or to relax effort at every insignificant dis- 
couragement ; but which presses steadily onward to its 
purpose, with a perseverance which never flags while 
progress is a possibility. 

With these suggestions, the undersigned conclude 
what they have to say in regard to the important sub- 
ject now pending before the Faculty and the Board of 
Trustees. At the time of their appointment, they had 
not contemplated any further action than a simple com- 
pliance with the request contained in the communica- 
tion of the Board, accompanied, perhaps, by a mere 
programme of such a scheme as they have endeavored 
to describe in this Report, for comparison with that 
which had been specifically called for. Any very rad- 
ical change in a system of instruction so generally ap- 
proved as that which has long existed here, they had 
not regarded as a possibility. A growing conviction, 
however, that the cause of sound education in Alabama 
is more seriously in danger than they had supposed, has 
constrained them, under the pressure of a deep sense of 
duty, to present in full the reasons which lead them to 
deprecate the introduction here of an educational system 
which a majority of our wisest men regard with distrust, 
and which has never been more than doubtfully suc- 
cessful in any college which has tried it in the United 

States. 

F. A. P. BARNARD, 

JNO. W. PRATT. 

TJnwersity of Alabama^ Sept. 18, 1854. 



LETTERS 



COLLEGE GOYERHENT, 



AND TIIK KVILS IXSKl'AKAIiLK I'UOM 



€\}t ^merirait CoHciic ,Sj)stnii 



IN ITS PRESENT FORM: 



ORIGINALLY AUDKESSEU TO HuN. A. 13. MIOKK, ONE OK THE KDITOIW OF 
TIIK MOIJILE KKCJISTEK. 



FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD, M. A., 

LAIK I'KOFK-JSOU OK CIIKMISTUV AXl) NATUUAl, lUSTDltY 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA. 



NEW YORK: 

!►. AITLEToN & CO., 340 AND 348 IJKoA 1 )\V.\ V 

18 5 5. 



CONTENTS. 



LETTER 1. 

Page. 
Strictures of the "Mobile Register," on certain regulations and usages exist- 
ing in the University of Alabama, considered. — Examination of the law 
known as " the exculpation law." 7 



LETTER II. 

Reasons why " the exculpation law " has proved a failure. — Inquiry how far 
it should be deemed hishonorable for one student to give testimony im- 
plicating another,. 17 



LETTEE III. 

Objection to the moral tendencies of "the exculpation law," considered. — 
Substantial benefits derived from the existence of laws to compel the dis- 
closure of truth, 26 



LETTER IV. 

Diiliculty of the position of College officers as governors. — Personal qualities 
essential to their success. — Principles of action by which they should be 
guided, 35 



LETTER V. 

The American College system mainly dependent for its successful operation 
upon the personal qualities of disposition and temperament of the men 
who conduct it. — Insecurity arising from this cause. — Enumeration of the 
most essential of the moral qualities which the college officer should pos- 
sess, 43 



* C O N T K X '1' S . 

I 

LETTER VI. 

rage. 
Objections of the " Register" to the daily visitation of rooms, considered. — 

Design of this visitation. — Reasons for maintaining the usage. — Social 

intercourse between officers and students ought to be cultivated, . . 51 



LETTER VII. 

No vindication of the existing system of college government can be univer- 
sally satisfoctory ; because, first, no system can be equally suited to stu- 
dents of every age ; and, secondly, the popular idea of the college student 
is drawn from the class who need least to be governed, . . . 57 



LETTER VIII. 

American colleges assume too great a responsibility. — The college system of 
this country, considered as a system of moral training, is a failure. — Is 
there any remedy ? 64 



LETTER IX. 

Evils of residence in dormitories. — Synopsis of Dr. Wayland's views on this 
subject, 72 



LETTER X. 

Evils of the dormitory sj'^stem further examined. — Its tendency to make the 
intellectual qualifications of instructors a secondary consideration. — Is it 
possible to abolish the system ? su 

LETTER XI. 

Experiment proposed for the University of Alabama. — Consideration which 
seems to have determined the choice of location for most of the colleges 
of the United States. — Its fallacy. — The dormitory system will be aban- 
doned ; but only very gradually, ........ 88 



L E T T E li XII. 

Positive advantages of large towns as sites for seminaries of learning. — Con- 
clusion, ............. 06 



INTRODUCTORY. 



The letters embraced in the following pages are republished, in compli- 
ance with numerous solicitations from sources entitled to respect. It may 
serve to explain the somewhat desultory manner in which the topics which 
they touch are treated, to say that they were originally designed for the col- 
umns of a daily newspaper, and that they were expected to enjoy only the 
ephemeral existence which such a channel of publication could secure. In 
reproducing them here, it might, no doubt, have been possible to subject 
them to a process of reconstruction, by which whatever they may contain of 
general interest might have been more happily presented ; while superflui- 
ties might, at the same time, have been retrenched, repetitions avoided, and 
all that is of merely local application, suppressed entirely. But this, by the 
pressure of more important occupations, has been rendered impracticable ; 
and they are therefore reprinted with but very slight alterations of their orig- 
inal form, in the belief that their imperfections, though they may do little 
credit to the writer, will not tend to disparage the cause which he advocates. 

It is obvious that, if there are evils really inherent in the existing 
system of college organization, the correction of these evils can hardly be 
looked for until the public demand it. So long as the people are content 
to take things as they are, so long as patronage is bestowed without mis- 
giving upon institutions embracing, as do most of our colleges at present, 
the features which it is the object of these letters to exhibit as objectionable, 
just so long, of course, will there exist no urgent motive to induce those 
who control such institutions to modify them in any manner which may 
involve expense. But if the public mind can be awakened to the magni- 
tude of the evils inseparable from the existing college system, though it be 
so far only as to demand that new colleges shall be constructed upon a 
wiser plan, and if the evidence of the change of public sentiment shall 
2 



in;tkoi)uctory. 

appear in the greater favor shown to such, then it is to be reasonably ex- 
pected tliat others, out of the mere instinct of self-preservation, will ulti- 
mately conform tliemselyes to the popular preference. The appeal, there- 
fore, must for the present be to the people. In making such an appeal in 
regard to an interest so vast, a single individual may well feel his insignifi- 
cance. But there are in the community great numbers of intelligent men 
who well know the evils attendant on the present college system ; men 
who, having been educated in colleges, have seen and felt them, but have 
perhaps liardly considered the question how far they are capable of removal ; 
and from among such men, if their attention can be drawn to the subject, 
the isolated advocate of reform may reasonably hope that many will be- 
come his hearty cooperators in the endeavor to impress the public mind, 
AVere it not for the existence of such a class, and for the fact that they are 
far more influential than any other in j)roportion to their numbers, the 
writer of these pages would be disposed to regard the idea of a possible 
reform of the prevailing college system as chimerical in the highest degree. 
Nor even when they shall become fully aroused to the importance of the 
change, if that shall ever be, and shall lend their united efforts to bring it 
to pass, is it to be expected that the object can be very quickly .accom- 
plished. So large are the pecuniary interests involved, that the disposition 
to change may not always be accompanied by the immediate power ; and 
an evil system may, in many cases, be perpetuated for years, for no reason 
but the mere inability to abandon it. Still, though the benefits of the de- 
sired reform should be reserved for the next, or even for a distant, genera- 
tion, its advocates should strive none the less earnestly to demonstrate its 
necessity; since it is only the faithfulness of their present efforts which 
renders even that distant good a possibility. 

It may be observed of these letters, that, though accident may be said 
to have determined the time of their appearance, and though they were 
written without any distinctly premeditated plan, yet in substance they 
embrace the convictions of some years of experience and reflection ; and the 
writer avails himself of this opportunity to acknowledge that his attention 
was first drawn strongly to the subject by the valuable little work of Dr. 
Wayland, to which he has taken occasion repeatedly to refer. 

(IfiivcrsiUj of Mississippi, Dec. 10, 1854. 



LETTERS ON COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 



LETTER I. 

STRICTURES OF THE MOBILE REGISTER, ON CERTAIN REGULATIONS AND 

USAGES EXISTING IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, CONSIDERED. 

EXAMINATION OF THE LAW KNOWN AS " THE EXCULPATION LAW." 

To THE Editor of the Mobile Registee, — 

Sir : — In tlie Camden Kepublic of June 24th, I find 
some remarks credited to the Kegister, on a few of the 
features of college government recognized in the Univer- 
sity of Alabama. Your strictures, which accord very well 
with observations I have often heard from intelligent gen- 
tlemen in private conversation, indicate that there is a 
defect or a difficulty somewhere in the American college 
system, to which it is desirable that the attention of the 
whole community should be understandingly drawn. I 
say a defect in the system, because nearly all the colleges 
in the United States are founded upon the same system, 
and the features to which exception has been taken, are 
features which have been adopted in each, without change, 
from those which are older. The visitation of the rooms 
of students, by members of the Faculty, which is spoken 



LETTERS ON 



of in your article as " the plan pursued by the Faculty of 
our University ^^'' is ])racticed in every college in the coun- 
try, in which students reside in the college buildings — 
that is to say, in every one in which it is practicable. If 
it is a bad plan, the extent of its prevalence does not, I 
freely admit, make it any better ; but the fact that it is so 
prevalent, may not be known to all the readers of the 
Register ; and for this reason an inference to our especial 
prejudice (which I am sure you did not design) may be 
drawn from your remarks. 

Again, "the plan adopted at ow University^ of put- 
ting the student upon his voir dire^'' is not peculiar to us, 
as might be inferred by a cursory reader. It is really an 
" adopted " plan, and the words of the law prescribing it 
are a literal transcript from the printed laws of the Col- 
lege of South Carolina. This again makes the plan no 
better, if it be true that it is intrinsically bad. But it 
suggests the possibility that a student, however distasteful 
he may find the system of discipline practiced here, cannot 
reasonably expect to mend his position in this respect by 
resorting elsewhere. 

All American colleges hold their students amenable to 
the authorities for violations of good order and good 
morals. All have a government of written law, and a 
brief and simple penal code. Yet no Board of Overseers 
or Trustees has yet been able, with all the advantages 
derived from the personal experience of its members as 
college students or college officers, or from observation of 
the practical working of different systems for more than a 
century, to devise a mode of administering that part of 



COLLEGE GOVEKNMENT. 



college government wLicli relates to offenses, without em- 
bracing in it provisions which have been sometimes made 
a subject of grave complaint, and sometimes of unsj)aring 
censure, directed against the governing body. 

In the article upon which I am commenting, for in- 
stance, it is urged against the " exculpation law" that "it 
is contrary to natural justice — contrary to ' the perfection 
of reason,' the common law — and contrary to any consid- 
erate method of moral culture." As my present purpose 
is not to vindicate exculpation law, or to meddle with it 
in any manner, I shall join no issue here. Suppose it be 
all you say of it, I wish to ask you whether or not (and I 
ask now for information, for I really do not know) it is 
the public impression that the principle of this law is at 
the bottom of our ordinary metltods of iwoceeding in cases 
of college discipline ? I ask this question, because, admit- 
ting the principle to be as exceptionable as you claim, the 
answer to it will have much to do in determining how far 
our system of government is odious. If what I see in the 
public prints (or have seen in former years) may be as- 
sumed to furnish me with any fair means of judging, I am 
justified in thinking that we are popularly supposed to 
proceed on this plan every day or every week. Now, 
the fact is that I have been an officer of the University of 
Alabama more than sixteen years ; and during this long 
period the offensive law has been resorted to only three 
times. The unfrequency of its actual application may 
serve to show that it is a measure in its original design 
intended only for those extreme cases in which the altern- 
ative is the annihilation of all government, and the tri- 



10 LETTEKS ON 

Timpli of anarchy. Whenever they have been driven to 
the adoption of this expedient, the Faculty of the Univer- 
sity have never put it into practice without a sense of pain 
and sorrow, for which their denouncers of the press or 
among the people never give them credit. They are 
charged with the preservation of order in college. They 
have a duty to execute, and they are not the authors of 
the system they are required to administer. When the 
question is reduced to this — shall law prevail, or shall 
misrule be triumphant and all the operations of college 
come to an end ? they must use the only means put into 
their hands to secure the supremacy of law, whether they 
like them or not, or whether or not the surrounding pub- 
lic approve. And this happens, perhaps, once in many 
years; while the comments which so often reach us, 
through our correspondence, through conversations with 
gentlemen at or from a distance, or through the press, 
proceed on the assumption that it is the commonest thing 
in the world, and that very possibly, the first business of 
the Faculty every morning after breakfast is, to put some 
twenty or thirty students on their " voir dire!''' 

I suppose that no government is anything better than 
a name, which possesses no means of protecting public 
order by the compulsory discovery of truth, when order 
has been violated and the witnesses are certainl}', or the 
offenders approximately, known. There are, so far as I 
know, but two modes of proceeding effectual for this pur- 
pose, and these are — 1. That which is sanctioned by " the 
perfection of reason, the Common Law," to compel the 
testimony of witnesses to the offense ; or, 2. The South 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 11 

Carolina plan, adopted liere, to require the innocent to say 
that they are innocent. The former is the plan of all the 
older colleges at the North; and, perhaps, of the newer 
also. The latter is peculiarly the Southern plan, intro- 
duced expressly as a concession to the scruples of sensitive 
young men. Since, liowever, the one and the other, when 
successfully enforced, result alike in securing the ends of 
government in the detection of the offender, the substitute 
has proved no more palatable than the law which it re- 
placed ; and the northern plan and the southern plan are 
equally under the ban of popular opinion. In the mean 
time, one or the other of them, from the stern necessity of 
the case, maintains its place in the written code of every 
college ; and both, when the painful necessity arises, con- 
tinue to be put into force, in spite of their unpopularity 
all over the country. 

If our friends among the people, or if our friends of 
the press, would turn their attention to the true point of 
difficulty, and would aid us with advice how we may 
escape from our present embarrassment, we w^ould receive 
their suggestions witb gratitude ; and whatever we should 
find in them adapted to remedy tlie evil, we would ear- 
nestly recommend to tlie consideration of the Board of 
Trustees. To judge from the manner in which we are often 
spoken of, it would seem to be thought that we delight in 
" exculpation " laws, and that we are never more happy 
than when tke college guillotine is in active operation. I 
am not using the language of hyperbole when I say this ; 
I but repeat almost literally what I have often heard. Is 
not this unreasonable ? Yet our case is not an isolated 



12 LKTTEK8 ON 

one. Similar SMiigiiiuary tastes are imputed quite as fre- 
quently to other Faculties. Can it be supposed that the 
members of College Faculties generally — men, be it consid- 
ered, who have been selected from the community on ac- 
count of some supposed more than average fitness for their 
places — can it be suj^posed that tbey are as a class so far 
behind the rest of the community, in their sympathies 
with the young men for whose benefit they labor, or in 
their judgments of what will most promote the welfare of 
their pupils, as to lean from choice towards measures 
which shock the public sensibilities, and to require a pop- 
ular censorship to restrain their tyrannical propensities ? 

As no one has yet suggested to us what new substitute 
we should adopt, in case we consent to expunge the " ex- 
culpation" law from the college code, we are now held up 
to public odium for an evil which we did not create, and 
which we know not how to remove. Even you, Mr. Edi- 
tor, would not have us go backward, and adopt the com- 
mon-law principle, which compels every witness to his 
neighbor's offense to testify to the fact or suffer. In this 
application, even " the perfection of reason " would strike 
you as an abomination. I do not say that I should en- 
tirely agree witli you ; but I state what you will admit to 
be a fact. I doubt if sucli of our citizens as condemn the 
law of " exculpation," have ever set it beside these older 
laws which it superseded. For their information, I will 
give an example of both. The following is extracted ver- 
batim from the laws of Yale College : 

" Whenever a student shall be required by one of the 
Faculty to disclose his knowledge concerning any disorder, 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 13 

offense, or offender, against a law of the college, and sLall 
refuse to make such disclosure, he may be sent home or dis- 
missed. No student shall be questioned for any testimony 
he may give in regard to a violation of a law of this col- 
lege ; and in case any student shall so question his fellow- 
student to ascertain whether he hath testified, or with 
intent to bring into contempt any student because he 
hath testified, the student so acting shall be deemed to 
have committed an offense, and may be proceeded against 
by the Faculty, according to the aggravation of the 
offense, even to dismission." 

While this was law in all American colleges, as it still 
is at New Haven, the objection raised to it by students 
was, that it is dishonorable to testify against a fellow- 
student. The substitute was devised to obviate this 
objection ; and as it stands in the code of the University 
of Alabama, it is as follows : 

" In ordinary cases, and for mere college misdemean- 
ors, no student shall be called upon to give information 
against another ; but when several persons are known to 
contain among them the guilty person or persons, that the 
innocent may not equally suffer with the guilty, they are 
all liable to be severally called up, and each to be put 
upon his own exculpation, unless the magnanimity of the 
guilty shall relieve the Faculty from the necessity of this 
expedient, by an ingenuous confession of his or their own 
fault. If any student, when thus permitted to declare his 
innocence, shall decline to exculpate himself, he shall be 
considered as taking the guilt of the offense upon himself, 
and encountering all the consequences. If a student shall 



14: L E T T E R S O N 

deny that he is guilty, that shall be taken as lyriiim facie 
evidence of his innocence ; but if it shall afterwards ap- 
peal- from satisfiictory evidence that he was really guilty, 
he shall be considered unworthy to remain in the Uni- 
versity." 

The requisition to testify against a fellow-student 
being here abandoned, a scruple arose, of a character en- 
tirely new. Hitherto it had been no part of the unwrit- 
ten code of undergraduate law, that the good should pro- 
tect, screen, and suffer martyrdom for the bad ; the whole 
college body Avere not held bound to become accessories 
after the fact to any enormity ; or to obstruct, by united 
and systematic action, the operations of law for its detec- 
tion. The popular sentiment in college favored the view 
that it is well that law shall have its course — it is well 
that offenders shall be reached and dealt with — it is well 
that good order and good morals shall be preserved, — but 
that it is not well that a student shall become an informer 
upon his fellow-student. I say that this was the popular 
sentiment, because I know it, having myself been educa- 
ted in a college where the old law prevailed. What pop- 
ular sentiment is with us now is evidenced in the fact, 
that it has the power to force young men of the highest 
standing for morality and personal rectitude of conduct, 
into a combination for the defeat of all inquiry, and for 
the protection of a fcAV disorderly individuals, whose tur- 
bulence, both by night and by day, is such as to obstruct 
all the operations of the University. Whether the young 
men in their scrupulous regard for what is due to good 
fellowship, are not beginning to " put too fine a point on 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 15 

it," I sliall not stop here to inquire. It is sufficient for me 
to say that when matters reach a pass like this, the neces- 
sity that something should be done is crying, and all the 
wisdom of University Boards has hitherto been able to 
discover but the two modes of proceeding I have pointed 
out, viz. — that which has the sanction of the " perfection 
of reason," and that which makes every student liable to 
be called on for his own exculpation. 

Lest any erroneous inference should be drawn from 
the time at which this letter is written, let me observe, in 
conclusion, that, though it is elicited by remarks of yours 
upon the late troubles in the University, it has no refer- 
ence whatever to them ; and that the " exculpation -law " 
was not applied during those troubles. Students already 
under suspension, have, it is true, as a condition of restora- 
tion, been required to make some disclaimers. Whatever 
may be said or thought of the expediency of this requisi- 
tion, of which I say nothing, thns much is at least true, 
that to refuse to make the disclaimers required, could, at 
this time, operate no advantage nor secure any protection 
to any fellow-student, since, when they were exacted, all 
parties were equally separated from the University 
already. 

Now, Mr. Editor, do not believe, because I have de- 
tained you so long over the matter of this law, that I see 
nothing in what seems to be the necessity of its existence 
to regret, or nothing in the evils which too usually follow 
its application to deplore. If you do so, you will do me 
great injustice. My only object in asking you to publish 
these remarks, is to draw the attention of thinking men in 



16 I. K T T E E S ON 

the community to the most difficult point connected with 
the whole subject of college discipline — the question how 
shall the sujoremacy of law be maintained in the last emer- 
gency, without an admitted power in Faculties to use 
either the means of investigation employed by civil courts, 
or those gentler, and (as was once thought certainly) less 
offensive ones, in consideration of which they have been 
content to yield the former. 

The topic which principally occupies this letter, is but 
one of several connected with college organization and 
government, on which I have often wished to address 
some observations to my fellow-citizens. With your per- 
mission, now that my hand is in, I will endeavor to make 
one or two further, but I hope not quite so formidable, 
encroachments upon your space hereafter. 

University of Alabama^ Jxih) 1, 1854. 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 17 



LETTER II. 

REASONS WHY " THE EXCULPATION LAW " HAS PROVED A FAILURE. IN- 
QUIRY HOW FAR IT SHOULD BE DEEMED DISHONORABLE FOR ONE 
STUDENT TO GIVE TESTIMONY IMPLICATING ANOTHER. 

In my last letter I promised, at greater leisure, to ex- 
amine still further some of the particulars in which the 
government of American colleges is attended with dif- 
ficulties, so great as to indicate a fault somewhere inherent 
in the system itself. I proceed to redeem my promise. 

It is certain that the greatest of the difficulties here 
spoken of is that to which my last communication was 
principally devoted, viz. the means of suppressing distur- 
bances of the peace, or of detecting their authors, when all 
ordinary appeals have failed, and it has become necessary 
to invoke the penalties of the law. Upon that subject I 
have not yet completed all that I have to say. 

I assumed that the very idea of government implies 
the possession of the power to compel, in some manner or 
other, the disclosure of truth, when that is necessary for 
the i^rotection of order, and for the maintenance of the 
supremacy of law. I described the two modes l)y which 
it has been attempted, in different colleges, to exercise 
this power : the first being no other than that used in 
civil courts, and the second being the mode prescribed in 
what is commonly called the " exculpation law," as it 
exists in this University and some other Southern colleges. 



18 LETTERS ON 

I have shown that the second of these modes was orig- 
inally devised for the purpose of obviating objections 
which had been made to the first. That it has completely 
failed in its object, is rendered obvious by the frequency 
Avith which we hear it denounced in conversation and in 
the public prints. For an instance, I need go no further 
than to your own expression of opinion in the Register, 
which furnished the occasion of my former communication. 
But, because I chose to demur to the grounds on which 
you took exception to the law, you must not understand 
me to regard the same law with entire complacency my- 
self By no means. I can never believe that any law 
which meets the disapprobation of the public, is a good 
law. The efficacy of law is not to be looked for in the 
pains and penalties it denounces, so much as in the sujd- 
port and approval of all good men. Whatever enactment 
fails to secure these, fails of the most essential element of 
moral power. It matters not whether it be intrinsically 
good or bad ; it is enough to make it bad, whatever be its 
intrinsic excellence, that the community who witness its 
enforcement regards it as oppressive and wrong. What 
more is necessary to undermine the efficacy of any law, 
than to crown with applause those who resist its opera- 
tions, and to canonize its victims as martyrs in -a glorious 
cause ! 

It may be answered that no law can be intrinsically 
good, against which the voice of the people among whom 
it exists is so emphatically and so unanimously pro- 
nounced. This argument is certainly plausible, but by no 
means conclusive. The law of Congress providing for the 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 19 

arrest and delivery of fugitive slaves is certainly a good 
law ; yet tlirougliout the length and breadth of the States 
for which it is designed, there is no division of opinion at 
all as to its wrongfulness. Those even who give it their 
support — politicians, editors, ministers of the Gospel — even 
judges from the bench — do so avowedly for no other rea- 
son but because it ^.S" a law, and not because they approve 
of its provisions. It is plain, then, that public sentiment, 
however decided, and however unanimous, is not always 
of necessity right ; and that the old maxim, vox populi 
vox DEI, is to be taken with a large latitude for error. 

I assume, then, that the "exculpation law" is not 
necessarily malum in se^ because the people do not like it ; 
but I admit that the tribunal of public opinion has cer- 
tainly made it malum pi'ohihitum^ to the extent that no 
college Faculty can apj^ly it without being immediately 
arraigned at that bar, as if they were the real offenders 
themselves. It fails, therefore, in what I have described 
to be the most essential element of moral power ; it fails 
because the public, as well as every community of under- 
graduate students, are banded against it ; and because ap- 
plause instead of censure awaits every individual who sets 
it at defiance. 

Has any thing been gained, then, by the attempt to 
substitute in colleges a method of legal investigation at 
variance with the principles of the honest old common 
law ? I think not ; yet while making this admission, I can 
see nothing morally wrong in the substitute. It is other- 
wise when we look at the subject in the light of expedi- 
ency, or as a question of policy. I cannot but believe that 



20 LETTERS ON 

a great mistake was made by the originators of this inno- 
vation upon tlie time-honored principles and practices of 
penal jurisprudence. It may be very noble, and honora- 
l)le, and magnanimous, and all that, for young men or old 
men to refuse to give testimony before any tribunal, the 
effect of which would be to expose their companions or 
friends to unpleasant consequences ; but it appears to me 
that the court which claims the right to such testimony is 
not called upon to make any such admission. And if it 
does make such an admission, in regard to the open, hon- 
est and straightforward form of explicit statement, then I 
cannot see how it has any right to claim that a refusal to 
permit the truth to be extracted from the witnesses by 
indirection, is any the less noble or honorable or magnani- 
mous. Both the old law and the substitute aim to fasten 
the offense upon the offender by the force of testimony. 
In the one case, the responsibility of this testimony is con- 
fined to a few ; in the other it is divided among a greater 
number. But that which is mean, or contemptible, or 
wrong in any individual, is not the less so because a whole 
community share in the taint. A stain upon the honor is 
not a thing to be diluted by involving in its foulness the 
honor of many. And whenever any governing authority 
admits for a moment that it is mean, or that it is wrong, 
for any individual of the subject body to give such testi- 
mony as may be necessary to secure the ends of good gov- 
ernment, it becomes self-divested of the most efficacious 
and almost the only means of ensuring the due observance 
of its laws. 

The principle that no student may, in any case what 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 21 

ever, without dishonor, give testimony to convict a fellow- 
student of a violation of college law, is at once mischiev- 
ous and wrong ; and one which the trustees and Faculties 
of colleges should be the very last to admit. No matter 
to what extent public sentiment may lend its sanction to 
this principle, the governors of colleges should set their 
faces resolutely against such a sentiment, and should en- 
deavor, by all the means in their poAver, to correct it. 
Least of all should they allow themselves to be borne 
along with it, or commit an act so suicidal as to stamp 
with their own openly expressed approbation, a principle 
which denies to them a right absolutely vital to the ad- 
ministration of any government. 

It is my candid opinion that our colleges have them- 
selves chiefly to thank, for the extent to which their 
powers of government are paralyzed by the influence of 
surrounding public opinion. Till they, in so many words, 
relinquished the right to compel the witnesses to any 
flagrant oftense to declare their knowledge, public senti- 
ment did not so universally, so unanimously, or so sweep- 
ingly stigmatize the act of giving such testimony. Why 
should it? It is not dishonorable to testify in a civil 
court. Nay, even when the civil power has occasionally 
interfered to take the administration of justice out of the 
hands of college Faculties, the very same young men who 
assumed to be unable to state the truth to their academi- 
cal superiors without dishonor, have shown no hesitancy 
to give evidence before a jury — yet no one has thought 
the worse of them. It is no reply to say that the civil 
court may commit a witness for contumacy ; and that 
3 



22 L E T T E R 8 O N 

therefore he has no choice but to testify. We are talking 
now about a question of right and wrong — honor and dis- 
honor ; and if, instead of committing to prison, our courts, 
like those of the Inquisition, could apply the rack, even 
torture itself could not justify the disclosures demanded, if 
it is really wrong or dishonorable to make them. 

But as it is usually true tbat there cannot be any 
widely spread or deej^ly rooted popular conviction, with- 
out some original basis of reason, to whatever extremes 
the conviction may have been carried which the basis will 
not justify, it is worth while to inquire out of what plausi- 
ble, or even in their first application just, considerations, 
has grown the doctrine that no student may inculj)ate 
another student by his testimony, without dishonor. In 
the first place, then, students associated together in the 
same class, or in the same college, occupy to each other 
not only the relation of subjects to a common government, 
but that, to a certain extent, of members of the same 
family. And as in families mutual confidence is an una- 
voidable necessity, so the obligation to guard it inviolable 
is one which exists antecedently to and independently of 
promises. It is not voluntarily assumed, and it cannot be 
repudiated at the option of the individual. But, secondly, 
it often happens, if not usually, that none are witnesses of 
those violations of college laws which become the subject 
of subsequent inquiry, who are not themselves to a greater 
or less degree implicated in them ; and hence, that the act 
of giving such testimony as may subject another to cen- 
sure, betrays a seeming willingness to purchase immunity 
to one's self by treachery to a friend. Viewed in this 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 23 

light, the act of testifying is especially odious ; and to this 
case I propose to devote no attention. 

But in regard to the implied bond of confidence be- 
tween members of the student-body, common sense sug- 
gests that it is not and cannot be of the uncompromising 
nature of that which accompanies the family tie ; while 
we cannot but call to mind that the civil power does not 
recognize even that as inviolable, when the public good 
requires that it should be set aside. The students of a 
college are by no means so compacted together that the 
private acts of each one are of necessity exposed to his 
companions. There does not, in other words, exist the 
forced confidence of the family ; and the main argument 
in support of the inviolability of that confidence in this 
case falls to the ground. Yet, inasmuch as it is undesira- 
ble that, in a community of generous and impulsive young 
men, there should creep in any thing like a feeling of mu- 
tual suspicion, I would have it continue to be thought, as 
it is I believe pretty universally thought, among Faculty 
and students equally, that information privately volun- 
teered by one student injurious to another, is entirely dis- 
honorable, and ought to be discountenanced by the au- 
thorities, as well as frowned on by the students. 

In many cases of disorder in college, not only are the 
great majority of the community unacquainted with the 
offenders — showing that no necessary confidence exists 
which is in the nature of things unavoidable — but, when it 
is otherwise, and when those who interrupt the good order 
of college force themselves upon the notice of their peace- 
ably disposed companions, it not seldom happens that 



24 L E T T E K S O N 

strong displeasure is excited on tlie part of those whom 
they thus make the witnesses of their lawlessness. It is 
nothing short of an absurdity to say that persons who are 
thus not necessarily cognizant of infractions of order, or 
who when made acquainted with them, are made so 
against their will, shall be held bound to identify them- 
selves with the offenders, and, no matter what may be the 
enormity of the offenses (and it is often great), shall actu- 
ally themselves suffer the penalties due to the misdeed, 
rather than by their testimony permit the authorities to 
suppress the disturbances, and protect them in the enjoy- 
ment of their rights, and in the peaceful prosecution 
of their studies. 

After what I have said, I suppose I need hardly tell 
you that, had I a system of law to prepare for a college 
about to go into operation, the " exculpation law " should 
form no part of my code. Neither would I commit the 
folly of requiring a Faculty to protect order and admin- 
ister justice, without empowering that body to investigate 
most thoroughly every case in which neglect of discipline 
might endanger the preservation of the ends for which 
government is instituted. And in order that nothing 
might be wanting to their power in this respect, I would 
make it obligatory on every student to give evidence — not 
to individual officers in private — by no means — but to the 
entire governing body, when sitting as a court of inquiry, 
in regard to any breach of law which may have occurred 
in his presence, or to his knowledge personally obtained, 
no matter by whom committed. Should the student so 
interrogated refuse to reply, he could but be dismissed ; 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 25 

and tliat is the penalty whicli college Faculties are now 
compelled to inflict on innocent men, when they refuse to 
declare, under the " exculpation law," that they are inno- 
cent. 

I am by no means sure that the doctrine I here avow 
will be a popular doctrine. I incline to think rather that 
it will be the very contrary. Since colleges themselves 
have done so much, in my honest belief, to aid in vitiating 
the public sentiment on this subject, I have little hope 
that the course which appears to me to be recommended 
by the plainest common sense, will meet for the moment 
the approbation of my fellow-citizens. I ask for no such 
immediate approval. I ask only that reflecting men shall 
turn over the subject in their minds, and come to no decis- 
ion at all until after mature consideration. It is evident 
that difficulties environ it on every side. Experiment has 
satisfied me that there is no escape by endeavoring to go 
round about. In this case, as in most in which there is 
any thing serious to be hazarded, I believe that the safest 
course is to take the bull by the horns. 

In concluding this letter, I would merely add that the 
modes of investigation of which I have been speaking, 
both that of the old colleges and its substitute which ex- 
ists here, much as they are denounced and rarely as they 
are applied, have after all been productive of an amount 
of good seldom considered and difficult to be estimated, 
constituting as they do the most substantial guaranty for 
the maintenance of order and the supremacy of law. This 
point I shall further illustrate hereafter. 

University of Alabama^ July 21, 1854. 



26 LETTEBSON 



LETTER III. 

OBJECTION TO THE MORAL TENDENCIES OF THE "EXCULPATION LAW " 

CONSIDERED. SUBSTANTIAL BENEFITS DERIVED FROM THE EXISTENCE 

OF LAWS TO COMPEL THE DISCLOSURE OF TRUTH. 

One of tlie objections advanced by the Register 
against tlie particular law of this and other Southern col- 
leges, which is known as the " exculpation law," I have 
thus far omitted to examine. I allude to the assertion 
that the mode of proceeding sanctioned by that law is 
" contrary to any considerate method of moral culture." 
Having frankly expressed my own very decided dissatis- 
faction with the law in question, on grounds of expediency 
and policy, I must still feel it to be my duty to defend it 
on those of morality. 

I have sh6wn that this law was adopted as a substitute 
for another, which other was supposed to press too harshly 
upon the delicate sense of honor of young men in Southern 
colleges. Hitherto the main, if not the sole, objection 
which has been alleged against it by the young men them- 
selves and their friends, has been that it still oppressed 
them in the same point in which the former had been 
intolerable ; that, in short, it was but a mode of obliging 
them to do indirectly, what the previously existing law 
required that they should do directty, viz. discover to the 
authorities the authors of any given violation of law. 
Whether or not the sentiment upon which this objection 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 



is founded is worthy of tte respect it has received, 
whether it is the offspring of a true or a false notion of 
honor, is a matter of no present importance ; its existence 
is undeniable, and it has down to the present time consti- 
tuted the entire basis of all the opposition which this un- 
fortunate law has had to encounter. The objection of the 
Register is new ; let us see if it is any more substantial. 
To me it appears to involve suppositions entirely incom- 
patible with each other. 

How it can rationally be maintained, for instance, that 
an individual whose sense of honor is so nice that he will 
not tell the truth, when called upon, lest he should impli- 
cate a companion, may yet not hesitate to tell a lie lest he 
should implicate himself, I am at a loss to comprehend. But 
should this phenomenon occur in an exceptional instance, 
how the whole body of the companions of such a recreant, 
should still feel bound, by the force of the sentiment above 
spoken of, to maintain their silence nevertheless, and even 
to give themselves up to martyrdom, in order to protect the 
mean-spirited delinquent in the enjoyment of the benefits 
of his falsehood, is still less conceivable. Can any thing- 
be more certain than that public opinion would blast such 
a wretch, and drive him out from a community of honora- 
ble men? For, be it observed, the case in which an 
offense is known only to its perpetrator, is a case almost 
or quite without example in college; and I cannot con- 
ceive that there could be any such case possible, in which 
a Faculty would ever think of applying the " exculpation 
law " as a means of investigation. The language of the 
law itself, as I have cited it in a former communication, 



28 LETTEKSON 

forbids sucli a supposition ; for it is there explicitly stated 
to be designed to discover the offender only when he is 
known to be one of several individuals distinctly designa- 
ted. The offender is always, therefore, more or less gen- 
erally known to the student-body ; and in case of an act 
of moral turpitude like that supposed above, he could not 
fail to become at once known to the whole. No young 
man, after such an act, would be tolerated for a moment 
in college; he would be ostracized without a dissenting 
voice. Those who have had the slightest acquaintance 
with such communities know this ; and I cannot but feel 
surprised that the editor of the Register should so soon 
have forgotten what his own observation as a student un- 
questionably taught him. But the " exculpation law " has 
not been assumed to exert any other demoralizing influ- 
ence except that of holding out an encouragement to 
falsehood. What that encouragement can amount to, in 
the face of counteracting principles so efficient as those 
which I have just pointed out, I leave my readers to 
judge. 

And here I might dismiss the subject were it not that 
the present objection, like those which I have heretofore 
disposed of, happens to lie with no less force against the 
old law — which I have shown to be the only alternative 
law — than it does against the present. Take the rule at 
Yale College, for instance, that the student shall testify to 
what he knows, let the evidence inculpate whom it may. 
A refusal to speak draws down the censure of the Faculty 
upon himself; a free declaration of the truth, criminates 
his fellow-student, and involves the witness in popular 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 29 

odium. In this case, as in tlie former, at a prima facie 
view, it would appear tliat faiseliood would save the wit- 
ness from unpleasant consequences on either hand. He 
may testify, and so disarm the Faculty; but he may testify 
falsely, and so save his companion. What is to prevent 
his doing this ? Nothing, but his own strength of prin- 
ciple, and that withering power of popular opinipn in 
college, before which the deliberate liar cannot for one 
moment stand. Thus, whichever be the mode of investiga- 
tion sanctioned by the laws of any college, the same temp- 
tation (if it is a temptation) to falsehood in the witness , 
equally exists; and the same powerful counter-influences 
co-exist with it, to neutralize its power to harm. 

I asserted in my last communication that the college 
laws to which so much exception has been taken, have, 
notwithstanding, been productive, after all, of a great deal 
of good ; and I promised further to illustrate this asser- 
tion. You will certainly not understand me to intend 
that they have effected this good by their frequent appli- 
cation ; since I have distinctly admitted that they are sel- 
dom put actually in force without being attended by tem- 
porary injury to the institution which is compelled to fall 
back upon them. I maintain that such ought not to be 
the case ; but I admit, as I have said before, that in the 
present morbid condition of public sentiment on the sub- 
ject, such is, in point of fact, the unfortunate truth. The 
good which they do is therefore not to be measured by 
the amount of transgression which they punish, l)ut by 
the much more considerable amount which they prevent. 

As American colleges are organized to-day, the oppor- 



30 L E T T E K S O N 

tunities of tlie Faculty personally to know in what man- 
ner the time of the students is occupied, at all those hours 
in which recitations or lectures are not actually proceed- 
ing, are so extremely limited, as to be practically little 
better than none at all. Our collegiate system is an 
attempted imitation of that which was instituted at Ox- 
ford and Cambridge, by the monkish lecturers of the mid- 
dle ages, founded mainly upon the principle of the monas- 
tery ; but the imitation is unfortunately complete only in 
the least desirable of its features, while it is deficient in 
most of the safeguards originally designed to secure it 
against abuses. In those venerable universities of Great 
Britain just mentioned, every college is a quadrangle, 
securely walled in, with a janitor always at the door, and 
with a definite hour for shutting in the entire community 
by bar and bolt. Within the same architectural pile re- 
side not only the governed, but all the members of the 
governing body, from the President (master) down to the 
numerous " fellows," one of whose duties it is to aid the 
authorities in the preservation of order. The whole col- 
lege body, moreover, not only reside under one roof, but 
dine together at one table ; so that, in all save the reli- 
gious aspect, the distinguishing features of the monastic 
family are kept conspicuously prominent to this day. 

It was not a very great undertaking for a body of gov- 
ernors possessed of advantages like those here described, 
to assume the responsibility of preserving good order 
among a body of students committed to their guardian- 
ship. With us in America the case is very different. Our 
college dormitories are erected in an isolated group, in the 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 31 

midst of an open area. No officers, or only liere and there 
a tutor, occupy rooms in these buildings by night ; none 
in some instances even by day. No president or profes- 
sor meets the students at a common table ; nor do com- 
mons continue still to exist, in the majority of cases. No 
janitor marks, or can mark, who leaves the premises dur- 
ing the hours which the law devotes to study ; still less, 
who steals away or returns at those unwarrantable hours 
of darkness when nearly every one of the offenses most 
ruinous to good order and most difficult to manage is usu- 
ally perpetrated. Yet under all these disadvantages, the 
public demands of the Faculty of every American college 
that it shall govern to the exclusion of every other species 
of authority, and shall still govern well. The college is a 
sanctuary which the civil power may not invade. It is an 
irrvperium in ira'perio within whose confines no municipal 
functionary may venture to set his foot. It is a commu- 
nity shut out with more than Japanese seclusion from the 
surrounding social world ; and subject in its members to 
none of those restraining influences, by which j^ublic opin- 
ion bears upon the conduct of the individuals who make 
up the society to which man is born, and to which the 
student himself must at length return. 

Such a community, so utterly exempt from every other 
species of control, it is which an American college Fac- 
ulty are required to govern, and to govern well. Is it 
reasonable to expect them to do this, without arming 
them with the power % And is it not nonsense to talk of 
furnishing them with such arms, while they are denied the 
right to compel, under the highest penalties of the law. 



32 L E T T E K S O N 

tlie disclosure of trutli, when the truth is necessary to the 
protection of order and the vindication of authority ? I 
have asserted, and nobody has denied, that there have 
been yet discovered but two modes of exercising this com- 
pulsion. I have admitted with regret that neither of 
these modes finds favor with the public at large, whose 
interests are deeply involved in the success of colleges, 
and whose support ought always to be unhesitating and 
prompt on behalf of college authorities. But in spite of 
this I maintain that these laws have been productive of 
incalculable good, and that they are so still, at this very 
day. 

They operate as a restraint of so powerful a nature, 
against pushing disorders to extremes, as to render such 
an event one of the rarest occurrences in college history. 
Unfrequently as they are applied, no student is ignorant 
either that they may be or that they inevitably will be 
so, whenever the necessity arises. Now, though no doubt 
it is a glorious fate, and one attended with much applause 
of friends, to say nothing of an almost inevitable newspa- 
per apotheosis, to perish (academically) in the fires of col- 
lege martyrdom ; it is, nevertheless, not a fate which is spon- 
taneously courted. No species of martyr — not even the 
Christian — is usually such from absolute preference or 
choice. And should the unbiassed testimony of young 
men themselves, who have had the largest experience in 
this way, be taken, I have no doubt whatever that it 
would be found to accord in the main with the view ex- 
pressed by the elder Weller of onatrimony^ viz. that it is 
a very fine thing no doubt, " but whether it is worth while 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 33 

to go tlirough SO mucli to gain so little, is perliaps more 
than can be said for it." 

As a general rule, it may be remarked that the student 
finds college life agreeable. There is a sort of indescriba- 
ble fascination about the microcosm of which it makes him 
a member. There is a charm in the ties to which it intro- 
duces him, and a fervor unfelt in later years, in the friend- 
ships which in the yet unchilled warmth of his youthful 
feelings it leads him to form. When, in the regular pro- 
gress of events, the inevitable hour approaches which is 
to dissolve this dreamy episode of his existence, he feels a 
pang, deep and real as that of the exile who steps on 
board the bark which is to bear him from his native land 
forever. Exceptions may — such undoubtedly do — exist; 
I speak of the great majority. And I say that a life so 
charming will not on slight occasion be voluntarily self- 
terminated ! 

I take no account here, at all, of the deep and earnest 
interest which many — possibly most — take in the intellec- 
tual pursuits to which their college life is devoted. I say 
nothing of the firm conviction and just appreciation of 
the value of the opportunities which they enjoy, for self- 
formation, and preparation to grapple with the realities of 
life, by which the minds of all thoughtful young men are 
impressed in the midst of the priceless advantages here 
surroundino: them. These are benefits which no man of 
sense will lightly relinquish, however ardent and impul- 
sive the fires of youth may make him. But I say that, 
when to these weighty considerations are added the pecu- 
liar charm of student life, of which I have more particu- 



34 LETTERSON 

larly spoken above, the inducement to avoid acts which 
may raise, and to suppress practices which may provoke, 
issues which, however attended with temporary eclat, 
must necessarily terminate disastrously to the student at 
last, is scarcely deficient in a single element of complete- 
ness. It is thus that the laws of which I have been speak- 
ing, exert a happy influence in spite of their unpopularity ; 
while, were no such laws in existence, American colleges, 
as at present organized, would possess no guaranty that 
their tranquillity would remain undisturbed for a single 
day. 

University of Alabama^ July 26, 1854. 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT, 35 



LETTER IV. 

DIFFICULTY OP THE POSITION OF COLLEGE OFFICERS AS GOVERNORS. 

PERSONAL QUALITIES ESSENTIAL TO THEIR SUCCESS. PRINCIPLES OF 

ACTION BY ^yHICH THEY SHOULD BE GUIDED. 

To wLat I have already said as to tlie necessity for the 
existence of a substantial guaranty for the preservation of 
good order in institutions organized as are, for the most 
part, the colleges of this country at present, I have noth- 
ing further to add. But having more than once alluded to 
the evidence of an evil or defect inherent in the system 
itself — evidence which cannot be evaded or impugned — it 
might be expected that I should point out this defect and 
endeavor to suggest a remedy. That is a part of my pur- 
pose, liut I am not quite yet prepared to come to the 
point. I have discussed but a portion of the evidence by 
which the existence of the evil is manifested. There re- 
mains still more behind. 

Before giving further thought to that matter, however, 
permit me to call the attention of the reflecting public to 
the difficulty and delicacy of the position in which all col- 
lege officers, under the existing system, are placed ; and 
the great need which they have, when they faithfully dis- 
charge their duty, of being sustained by the approbation 
of the wise and thinking ; since it is vain for them to look, 
when it is most to be desired, for that of the masses, who 
are too apt to judge without consideration, and are predis- 



30 L E T T E R S O N 

posed to condemn (as I have already shown) the only 
basis on which a stable college government can be erected. 
While matters proceed smoothly and the penal law slum- 
bers, it is possible that those who happen to be at the 
head of affairs may receive higher commendation than 
they really deserve ; and that without possessing uncom- 
mon qualities as governors of youth, they may yet be re- 
jxited to possess them. But let disorders arise, and let it 
become necessary to resort to measures of extremity to 
suppress them, and it wall presently be manifest that no 
prudence, no forbearance, no wisdom, can save the best 
men from the much evil-speaking which the popular dis- 
like of the system they administer is sure to draw down 
upon them. 

While this faulty system continues, then, will it ever 
be jDOSsible so to conduct the government of any college, 
as to avoid altogether the recurrence of scenes like that 
through which the Universit}^ of Alabama has recently 
passed, and which never fail to give a shock to the pros- 
perity of the institution in which they occur, from which 
it requires a sensible time to recover ? So long as human 
nature remains what it is, the answer to this question 
must, I fear, be negative. For in order that the possibil- 
ity may exist, it is necessary that a government should be 
so wise and so prudent and so benignant, as by its moral 
power alone to accomplish all the ends which laws are en- 
acted to secure. And such a government, by the terms of 
our supposition, must not be merely temporary — as may 
well happen under now and then a preeminently gifted 
head — but permanent, under a succession of rulers. This 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 37 

is more than can be reasonably expected. Yet the fact 
that the strong arm of the law is not oftener invoked is 
e\idence that college officers, as a class, do in fact possess 
a large share of those qualities which render law unneces- 
sary, and to the presumed possession of which they owe in 
a considerable measure, their selection for the posts which 
they fill. Persons unaccustomed to reflect upon this sub- 
ject, may imagine that it is a very simple thing to dis- 
charge at once faithfully and acceptably the delicate re- 
sponsibilities resting upon. a member of the government of 
a college. There is no difficulty in showing how great is 
the mistake committed by such. 

It is not enough that a man be a good man in order 
that he may succeed as a governor of youth. The very 
best of men may make the worst possible of governors. 
Good men act from convictions of duty ; and when once 
their course is chosen, the mens conscia recti not only sus- 
tains them in it, but forces them to cling to it, whatever 
may be the consequences. How important, then, that a 
man should be wise as well as good — that his judgment 
sliould be as sound as his purposes are upright and his 
principles pure ! But wisdom and goodness combined are 
still insufficient to guaranty the success of a college gover- 
nor. Rectitude of intention and soundness of judgment 
may lead to a correct decision as to what the exigencies of 
a particular case demand ; but absolutely the same meas- 
ure in the hands of two different men may be put into 
force with results very unequally successful. In college 
as in family government it is manner no less than sub 
stance which secures subordination, and determines com- 
4 



;>S L K T 'I' K K S O N 

pliauce with the requirements of authority. This consid- 
eration is of the very highest importance. I propose to 
inquire, therefore, more positively, what are the qualities 
which a member of the government of a college ought to 
possess ? 

Before descending to particulars, I may say in general 
terms, that these qualities ought to be such as, in their 
combination, to impress all whom his authority reaches 
with the full conviction that toward them personally he 
has but one feeling, which is a feeling of kindness ; and 
that in whatever he does affecting them he has but one 
motive, which is to do them good. It unfortunately too 
often happens that an impression the very opposite of this 
springs up and becomes permanently established among a 
body of students. I have known this to occur in refer- 
ence to men who certainly lacked none of the qualities 
which miofht have enabled them to command a more desi- 
rable reputation ; but who failed to appreciate the great 
importance of establishing their rule on the basis of the 
affections. I am aware that it is hardly with reason to be 
supposed that any college officer can entertain toward the 
students whom he instructs any feelings but those of the 
utmost kindness and good will. The question is not, how- 
ever, a question of fact on the one side, so much as one of 
conviction on the other ; it is not whether the officer is, 
but whether he is believed to be, the student's friend. A 
conviction of this kind once established in his favor 
throughout the little community to which he belongs, 
arms such a man with a power to control, which all the 
terrors of the law could not otherwise give him. 



C h L E G E G O V E K N M E N T . 39 

But it may be asked, How can one who from the neces- 
sities of his situation must sometimes admonish, sometimes 
censure, sometimes perhaps even subject to punishment, 
some of those who are placed under his guardianship, how 
can he under such circumstances secure that universal and 
eminently desirable confidence, which I have represented 
to be so important an element of his success ? In reply, I 
must refer to that distinction which I have made above, 
in regard to manner in carrying out measures of govern- 
ment. College officers may censure and punish without 
destroying the confidence of those who incur their dis- 
pleasure in the sincerity of their desire to promote in the 
highest degree the welfare of all subject to their govern- 
ment, or without shaking the belief of the culprit himself 
that they entertain toward him personally no feelings but 
those of friendship and kindness, even while they censure. 
An assertion of this kind may be best established by illus- 
tration. The venerable Dr. Day, of New Haven, still 
lives, beloved of hundreds whose youthful indiscretions he 
censured, whose youthful follies he rebuked, and whose 
youthful passions he restrained and controlled. For half 
a century he was an officer of the largest college in the 
United States, and for thirty years of that period he occu- 
pied the presidency. During his connection with the col- 
lege more than four thousand students were graduated, 
and there were not less than two thousand more who did 
not complete the collegiate course. Out of all the great 
number who thus came in contact with this admirable 
man and faultless college officer, I never heard of one who 
did not always regard him with feelings of confidence and 



4(> I, E T T ]•: R S (3 N 

affectiou ; nor even now do I meet an alumnus of tliat 
institution, however long graduated, whose heart does not 
turn back, like my own, with a glow of grateful reniem- 
l.irance to the guide and friend of his early years. The 
thing, therefore, is practicable. What, then, are the per- 
sonal qualities and what are the principles of action 
which may enable any officer to realize it in his own 
case? 

To speak of the second point first. Confidence is a 
feeling which cannot exist all upon one side, any more than 
love ; nor can a college officer command the confidence of 
students, without reposing, or at least seeming to repose, 
a correspondent confidence in them. A principle of 
action, therefore, from which no wise college officer will 
depart, is invariably to treat the student as if he believed 
him to intend rightly. In nine cases out of ten, he will 
be able to do this from conviction ; for, manifestly, as a 
general rule, the student must and will intend rightly; 
and if in the tenth case circumstances arise to create a 
doubt of this, he will at once frankly state these circum- 
stances, and aftbrd the opportunity for an exj^lanation. 
He will, in short, ujDon this point have no concealments, 
nor allow his manner ,^to Jjetray any thing dubious. By 
adopting this as a principle he will, in ninety-nine cases 
out of a hundred, be met in a spirit of equal frankness, 
and will remove the strongest of the temptations by 
which youth are led to engage in violations of the rules 
of order. To attempt deliberately to deceive him, or 
to impose upon his confidence, will be regarded as an 
act partaking of the nature of treachery — the most odious 



COLLEGE GOVERNMEXT. 41 

of all species of moral delinquency in the eyes of generous 
young men. 

It will be another principle of action which a w4se 
governor of youth will observe, to resort to no means of 
seeking to learn in what manner the hours of young men 
■are employed, during which his personal observation can- 
not reach them, except such as are fair, above-board, and 
distinctly avowed. This principle would be but a neces- 
sary consequence of the former, provided that were adopt- 
ed in full sincerity of purpose, and not merely in outward 
show. But there is an element of suspicion innate in some 
natures, which will not let them fully confide in those 
around them, and least of all, perhaj)S, in those who are 
subject to their authority. Such persons, though from 
convictions of policy they may endeavor to wear an unsus- 
pecting front, find it sometimes impossible to resist the 
temptation to listen to information coming to them through 
tlevious channels, or occasionally even from putting in train 
devices of vigilance which differ little in principle from 
deliberate and systematic espionage. It is to be doubted 
w^hether any thing so learned is ever productive of any 
substantial benefit to either party ; but it is quite certain 
that if the means employed become known or even suspect- 
ed, the moral power of the governor who uses them is bro- 
ken forever. Between equals, nothing is more true than 
that none confide in those who refuse to render confidence 
in turn ; between subordinate and superior, this is, if possi- 
ble, still more emphatically the case. It would be a curi- 
ous, and at the same time an instructive inquiry, were it 
practicable, to ascertain how many of the difinculties, great 



42 I- E T T K K S ON 

and small, wLicli liave arisen to mar tlie peace of colleges, 
have sprung from the irritation which a sensitive disposi- 
tion never fails to experience at the impression conceived, 
whether justly or unjustly, by its possessor, that his foot- 
steps have been dogged, his private acts scrutinized, and 
his careless and unguarded expressions noted down to be 
used to his disadvantage. Conceived, I say, M-hether 
justly or unjustly; but in the shape which the impression 
too often takes, and which, not to mince matters, I pur- 
posely clothe in the language which the exasperated stu- 
dent himself is wont to employ, there can be no cpiestion 
that it is always unjust. Yet this circumstance renders it 
none the less prolific of evil. Upon him who entertains 
it, it exercises all the powder of an odious reality to incense 
and inflame ; and even when full conviction does not at- 
tend it, it is so far from being the less irritating, that the 
angry youth is often only the more angry at the sugges- 
tion of a possible doubt. It is the part of w^isdom, there- 
fore, to avoid anv thino^ which can furnish a basis, how- 
ever shadowy, to impressions like these. IS^or do I believe 
that college officers often err in this way. I believe that, 
with most, there is a frankness of real confidence mani- 
fested toward the students whom they meet, which engen- 
ders an equally unreserved reciprocation of the same feel- 
ing ; and that the instances are rare indeed, in which the 
foundation of this desirable state of things is broken up 
by such measures of vigilance on the part of superiors, as 
are calculated to destroy that mutual kindness and good 
will, which are the firmest security for the stability of any 
government. 

University of Alahama^ July 31, 1854. 



COLLEGE G O V K R N M E N T . 



LETTER V 



THE AMERICAN COLLEGE SYSTEM MAINLY DEPENDENT FOR ITS SLCCESSELL 
OPERATION UPON THE PERSONAL QUALITIES OF DISPOSITION AND 
TEMPERAMENT OF THE MEN WHO CONDUCT IT.^-INSECURITY ARISING 

FROM THIS CAUSE. ENUMERATION OF THE MOST ESSENTIAL OF THE 

MORAL QUALITIES WHICH THE COLLEGE OFFICER SHOULD POSSESS. 

I HAVE spoken of certain principles of action, the 
observance of wliicli on the part of those who are charged 
with the government of young men, I consider to be 
essential to the permanent success of their rule. I am 
about to speak of certain positive qualities of disj^osition 
and temperament, which, in their very highest manifesta- 
tions, are perhaps the gift of few, but of which the posses- 
sion, in a degree greater than belongs to the generality of 
mankind, is apparently no less essential to the certain 
attainment of the ends of good government. Nor in doing 
this am I deviating from the main purpose I have in view 
in this series of articles, which is to demonstrate the exist- 
ence of an imperfection in our college system as at present 
organized, in order that I may proceed to suggest what 
seems to me a simple and easy remedy. 

I do not wish to anticipate, nor to take up things out 
of their natural order; yet since I have distinctly an- 
nounced my ultimate design, it may not be amiss to say 
here, for the sake of preventing misconceptions, that what 
I have to propose is no great an(J sweeping change, no 



44: T. K T T E R S OX 

suspicious or startling innovation. Neither tLe evil nor 
its remedy have any necessary connection whatever with 
the system of instruction now generally practiced in 
American colleges. The removal of that evil involves no 
derangement of that system, nor any injury to a single 
one of its important features. But of this, those who have 
patience to follow me to the end, will be able to judge in 
due time. 

Meanwhile, if I show it to be a fact, that the successful 
operation of the existing system of government depends 
almost wholly upon the character of the men who admin- 
ister it ; and further, that the peculiar endowments which 
especially fit men for this difficult task, are in their fullest 
development rare, I shall have established a priori^ what 
exj^erience corroborates, that such a system is always in- 
secure; and that, if this element of hazard admits of 
removal, the remedy ought to be applied. 

The first trait of character which I regard as essential 
to the success of a college officer under our present system 
of government, is one in which few are found to fail ; but 
which rather from its occasional predominance over the 
milder traits, gives sometimes something like a tone of 
harshness to the manner, which it were better to veil ; and 
that is firmness. No government can succeed which fails 
to command respect, and no respect can be felt for a vac- 
illating, timorous, or irresolute superior. The hand must 
be at once strong and steady which holds the rein over 
the giddy impulses of heedless or undisciplined youth ; 
nor will any be found more ready to admit this necessity 
than those, or at legist the majority of them (for most 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 45 

young men are ingenuous) wlio themselves need tbe 
restraint. But upon this point it is unnecessary to multi- 
ply words, since the absence of the quality under consider- 
ation is rarely one of the faults of an American college 
officer. 

It may be occasionally otherwise in regard to the qual- 
ity of which I am next to speak, and of which the import- 
ance is always most felt in connection with the last. I 
mean a mildness of manner^ which divests the firmest 
government of every appearance of sternness, and clothes 
the severest decrees of justice with the exterior of kind- 
ness. The popular appreciation of the value of such a 
union of qualities is manifested in the frequent application 
of the maxim, which, with aphoristic brevity, associates 
them, as the '■'' suaviter in modo^fortiter'in reP Napoleon 
observed of the French, that they needed for their control 
" a hand of iron in a glove of velvet." One of his subjects, 
who probably knew by experience the feeling of the hand, 
remarked, that the great monarch never failed of the irou 
grasp, but often forgot to put on the glove. The observ- 
ation of the French emperor is not inapplicable to the 
impulsive youth of our American colleges ; and while I 
yield to no one in my conviction of the indispensable 
necessity of firmness and decision in college government, I 
sincerely believe that an exterior of unvarying mildness 
on the part of those who administer such a government, is 
a means of preventing evil, more eflicacious than all the 
penalties of the law put together. If youthful passions, 
prompt to efifervesce, are easily excited, so are they quite 
as easily soothed ; and the fable of the sun and the wind, 



46 LET T ]-: K S O N 

thoiigli it symbolizes a trutli as universal as human nature, 
is nowhere more strikingly illustrative than within the 
walls of a college. 

Much, also, of the success of college government de- 
pends upon the exercise of a ivise discretion by the officer, 
in regard to the use he may make of his own powers. 
Because he may punish, it does not follow that he always 
should j)unish, whenever occasion arises. It does not even 
follow that he should always betray his knowledge of the 
offense, farther than to the offender himself By privately 
admonishing the individual of the impropriety of his con- 
duct, and pointing out to him the danger to which he has 
exposed himself, much more good may often be accom- 
plished, in the way of prevention and reformation, than 
by all the disgrace attendant on public rebuke and cen- 
sure. When such a course is possible, it is obviously the 
wisest, as it is the kindest and most forbearing. But such 
a mode of proceeding may not always answer the purpose ; 
and on this account it is, that no quality of mind is of 
higher value in the officer than a clear and discreet judg- 
ment. Censures, penalties, punishments of all kinds, are 
unavoidable necessities, arising out of the imperfection of 
human nature ; but as their main design, in human insti- 
tutions, is the prevention of offenses, so the less they are 
resorted to, consistently with the attainment of this end, 
the better. 

It is not an'unfrequent occurrence, that a young man 
in college feels himself aggrieved by something which has 
occurred between him and his instructor. He may imag- 
ine that a fair hearing has not been given him in the reci- 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 4T 

tation room; or lie may interpret in an injurious sense, 
words addressed to him in the hearing of his class ; or he 
may believe that he has not been rated as high, on the 
record, as his performances merit ; or some other cause of 
dissatisfaction may arise, to induce him to remonstrate or 
complain. Nor should the instructor turn from such rep- 
resentations contemptuously away. Patience should be 
one of his marked characteristics ; and he will probably 
never find it more thoroughly tried than on occasions of 
this kind. For if he possess the qualities I have already 
enumerated, especially the last two named, he will have 
been steadily laboring against the very errors which he 
sees thus imputed to him, and he must feel that his inten- 
tion is certainly wronged, whatever impression his words 
or acts may have conveyed. But this must not provoke 
him to listen any the less patiently, or to explain any the 
less circumstantially, the occurrences out of which the 
dissatisfaction has grown ; nor if he pursues such a course 
will he usually fail to dispel the momentary chagrin, and 
re-establish the feeling of confidence and kindness which 
it had temporarily disturbed. 

I need not say how important it is that the college 
officer, whether in dispensing censure or praise, should be 
actuated by no feeling of favor on the one hand, or of 
prejudice on the other. There exists no higher necessity 
in the civil courts, that justice should be meted out with 
severe impartiality^ than that the same principle should 
preside over all the awards of college authority. No 
more frequent charge is advanced against the oflicers of 
our literary institutions, than that they are partial. The 



48 I. E T T E K S ON 

partiality alleged to exist, is more eommouly one of favor 
than the contrary ; but we hear it sometimes asserted, 
nevertheless, that the prejudices of officers blind them to 
the merits of certain individuals, or lead them to exercise 
toward such an undue severity. As a general rule, it 
may be said that these imputations are unfounded. The 
disregard Avith which, often as they are made, they are 
treated by the public, shows that they are considered to 
be, as on the slightest estimate of probabilities they must 
appear, entirely baseless. They point out, nevertheless, a 
quality which it is absolutely indispensable that the col- 
lege officer should possess ; while they admonish us that 
it is not the possession alone, but the reputation of pos- 
sessing (I refer to the reputation within the college itself), 
which the judicious officer will aim to secure. 

It may be observed that the most cautious wisdom 
will not always preserve to the most judicious college 
officer, the invariable and unfailing good-will of those 
whom it is his duty to control. Sudden ebullitions of 
temper on the part of excitable young men, may 2)rompt 
them to hasty words or acts, well suited to subvert the 
equanimity of any one, however by nature imperturbable. 
Yet the imperturbability of the college officer should be 
superior to all such provocations. He should tranquilly 
suffer the moment of excitement to pass by ; and allow 
the offender, under the influence of the self -rebuke usually 
consequent upon reflection, to make the reparation which 
the case demands. To allow himself to become excited, is 
but to widen the breach and render it irreparable ; when 
but a single consequence can possibly follow. He who 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 49 

has set at defiance tlie authorities of the college, or treated 
its representative with gross disrespect, can no longer re- 
main a member of the institution. The necessity, there- 
fore, oi great power of self co^mnand on the part of a col- 
lege officer is obvious; for though the occasions which 
may severely try it can never be frequent, yet the want of 
it, whenever they occur, is a misfortune for which nothing 
can adequately compensate. 

I have but one thing more to add. To a wise college 
governor, the word inexokable ivill he unhnown. The 
faults of youth are usually faults of impulse rather than of 
deliberate purpose. They evince not so much settled wick- 
edness as thoughtless folly, or giddy recklessness of dispo- 
sition. Few so immature in years as are the majority of 
college youth, are already entirely abandoned ; while it is 
a fact almost without exception, that those among every 
body of students who have passed the climacteric which 
separates them from boyhood, have ceased any longer to 
require the restraining influence of college governments. 
The culjDrits, then, who are brought to the bar of college 
justice, are almost invariably boys, whom vice has not had 
time utterly to subjugate, and whose consciences are not 
yet callous to every appeal. From such, when they repent, 
a considerate governor will be slow to turn unfeelingly 
away ; nor while there remains room for pardon will he 
hesitate to extend it to them. He will remember, that on 
his decision, perhaps hangs the entire destiny of the often- 
der, for this world if not for another ; and no considera- 
tions but such as involve the highest interests of the entire 
community over which he is placed as a guardian, will 



50 I. E T T p: K S ON 

prevent his accepting the evidence of sincere repentance 
as an exj)iation of .the most serious fault. 

But were all college officers gifted in the highest degree 
with the qualities which I have enumerated, I do not know 
that it would follow that troubles would be impossible. I 
only know that the non-existence of these endowments, to 
at least a pretty large extent, leaves open a wide door for 
their entrance. It is true, therefore, that the existing col- 
lege system is dependent for its successful operation, in a 
very eminent degree, upon the kind of men to whom its 
administration is entrusted ; and this fact, if it inheres in 
the system only in consequence of the existence in the 
same system of features which are inessential to the great 
purposes of education, and which admit of easy removal, 
is an evil the more to be deplored, because it is unneces- 
sary. 

University of Alabama, Aug. 5, 1854. 



COLLEGE Ci O V E R N M E N T . 51 



LETTER VI 



■OBJECTIONS OF THE "REGISTER TO THE DAILY VISITATIOX OK UOOMS, CON- 
SIDERED. DESIGN OF THIS VISITATION. — REASONS FOR MAINTAINING 

THE USAGE. SOCIAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN OFFICERS AND STUDENTS 

OUGHT TO BE CULTIVATED. 

I AIM now prepared to return to the consideration of a 
college usage to which you have raised serious objections, 
but which I dismissed, in the commencement of this dis- 
cussion, with no other remark than that its prevalence is 
co-extensive with that of the system itself : — I allude to 
the practice made obligatory on the officers of colleges to 
visit, from time to time, the rooms of the students, during 
the hours set apart for study. 

You object to visitation mainly upon two grounds: 
First, that it is an invasion of the natural right of the stu- 
dent to privacy ; and, secondly, that its object is to obtain, 
by sly and stealthy approaches, a knowledge of such un- 
lawful practices as would not probably be reached by fair 
and honorable means. I do not say that you charge, in 
so many words, premeditated and systematic meanness on 
all college officers, but this charge is certainly contained, 
by implication, in your objections to the practice under 
consideration. 

Now, in what sense, I ask, is any natural right of the 
student invaded by subjecting him to this liability to visi- 



52 L K •!' T E R S ON 

tation ? The college receives him as a student, only on 
the condition that he consents to yield up a material por- 
tion of his time to the direction of the authorities. These 
authorities, in order that there may be no possible mistake 
as to how far this condition extends, and as to what they 
claim as their own, have specified, in printed rules, a copy 
of which is furnished to each individual affected by them, 
precisely what hours of the twenty-four shall not be pri- 
vate to the student ; but may be, if they so require it 
(and they occasionally do) passed uninterruj^tedly in their 
immediate presence. The officer who is to meet a class at 
a certain hour, for recitation or lecture, may require their 
attendance upon him, if he pleases, during all the preced- 
ing hours of preparation. I have often done this. On 
special occasions, I have been repeatedly requested to do 
it by the classes themselves. But in case this right is 
w^aived, as it usually is, and study is prosecuted in the stu- 
dent's own aj)artment, the law recognizes no privacy what- 
ever during the period allotted to study ; and it provides 
for the visitation of the rooms, as a practical standing asser- 
tion of the fact that his time is in no sense whatever the 
property of himself, but that it belongs to the authorities 
to dispose of, absolutely as they please. Beyond these 
hours, thus set apart for university purposes, the system 
of visitation does not extend; and, in modern colleges, 
never has extended. Out of this time, so long as no dis- 
order occurs to require interposition, the privacy of the 
dormitories is as much respected by the authorities, as 
that of the Grand Turk's seraglio by all good JMusselmans. 
Now, here you have the whole system in a nutshell — 



COLLEGE G O V E E N M E NT . 53 

its original design and its basis of riglit and reason. Con- 
sidered from tliis point of view, what can you find in it 
exceptionable l Nevertlieless, I am sure that the officers 
of colleges — those of this college at least — are not tena- 
cious of this practice. They would be willing to abolish 
it to-morrow, if they were not convinced that the students 
would never be permanently contented under such a 
change. This doubtless will surprise you, and you will 
beg leave to record your emphatic dissent ; but we hioiv 
what we say, because we have tried the experiment. For 
a year or two — I am unable to say how long — while our 
numbers were fewer than they have since been, we prac- 
ticed no visitation. We resumed the practice at the re- 
quest of the students themselves. Those who desired to 
study, and these are always a majority, found their pri- 
vacy so encroached upon by those who did not, as seri- 
ously to annoy them, and obstruct the prosecution of their 
regular pursuits. The nuisance continued to grow, with 
growing numbers, until it became intolerable ; and the re- 
sult was what I have stated. And so I do not doubt that 
it would be again, were we to discontinue the practice 
once more. I do not suppose that the evil would instanta- 
neously reappear. Habits of lounging from room to room 
and wasting time in profitless trivialities, do not grow up 
in a day ; but that they will grow up, where there is no 
check to prevent their development, in tlie midst of any 
community embracing a hundred or two of young men 
brousrht too-ether at random, I believe to be as certain as 
that human nature always remains the same. The check 
afforded by the system of visitation is slight. It creates 



54 L E T T E K S O X 

only a liability on the part of individuals to be found, 
more or less frequently, inattentive to their own proper 
business, and interrupting their neighbors in the prosecu- 
tion of theirs ; but while it is inadequate to the complete 
prevention of such irregularities, as every plan short of 
constant supervision must be, it is efficient enough to pre- 
vent their becoming excessive. Still, I repeat, the Fac- 
ulty of this institution regard the system of visitation so 
much more in the light of a favor shown to the students, 
than in that of an oppressive molestation, that, I have no 
question at all, they would abolish it without hesitation, 
were the majority of the fathers who have sons here, or 
even of the sous themselves after carefully considering 
the subject on all sides, to desire it. 

Your second objection, I am disposed to believe, you 
will, upon reflection, retract. I know that it is not very 
uncommon for young men, when under the influence of 
excitement caused by some act of college discipline, to say 
things very disparaging to those whose only fault is, that, 
often with pain to themselves, they have faithfully dis- 
charged their duty ; butsurely, a gentleman who knows the 
world so well as the editor of the " Register," cannot for 
a moment believe that an individual fit to occupy the dis- 
tinguished post of a professor of elegant letters or of the 
liberal arts, would be capable of practices which would 
make him unworthy to share the society of honorable 
men. Upon this objection I shall therefore dwell no lon- 
ger than to express my regret, that imi^utations which 
may easily be pardoned to hasty and inconsiderate youth, 
prompted by excited feeling, should have found a place in 



COLLEGE G O V E R X >I E N T . 55 

a journal, so widely circulated and so influential as the 
" Register." 

In dismissing this topic, I would remark, that the duty 
of official visitation, necessary as under the existing col- 
lege system it seems to l3e, is one which peculiarly tests 
some of those qualities of the college officer of which I 
made mention in my last communication, and especially 
those which relate to manner. Consideration for the stu- 
dent's necessary occupation will not ordinarily admit of 
more than a moment's delay dui'ing the visit to each 
room ; and the extent of the round to be made admon- 
ishes the visitor that he must economize his own time. 
The brevity of the call, therefore, adds something to that 
tendency to stiffiiess which the consciousness of its official 
character is aj^t to imj^art to it. He who can discharge 
this duty so as invariably to give and receive pleasure at 
every repetition of it, must be considered to~possess a tem- 
perament peculiarly adapted to the position he occupies. 
Yet the thing is not impossible. I have known it to be 
true of men who have been subjected to the test for 
years ; and this I regard as an additional evidence that 
the system, however unlovely may be the colors in which 
you have painted it, is not in itself necessarily odious. 

One additional remark in conclusion. While speaking 
of official visitation, I would express my belief that, if 
there were more unofficial visiting between officers and 
students than usually takes place in our colleges, the effect 
would be eminently beneficial. Let there be moments 
when the artificial relations of instructor and pupil shall 
be forgotten, or at least by common consent kept out of 



56 L E T T ]•; li s ox 

sight; and tliere cannot fiiil to grow wp a feeling of kindly 
personal interest between the parties, of wonderful efficacy 
in promoting the harmony and happiness of the entire 
community. On the part of officers, it is often difficult, or 
even impossible, to do in this way so much as they would ; 
both because of the pressure of burthens public and pri- 
vate on their hands, and because of the large number of 
the young men between whom their attention must be 
divided ; but they ought to invite and encourage the vis- 
its of students to themselves, so far as their engagements 
will allow ; and I have no hesitation in saying, that they 
should recijDrocate such visits whenever it may be in their 
power. It is my candid opinion that all the laws which 
were ever enacted for the good government of colleges, 
are weak ai;id nugatory, compared with that boundless 
moral influence which it is possible for the individual offi- 
cer to acquire, by winning the affections, instead of oper- 
ating on the fears, of those whom he instructs. Perhaps 
there is no sinsj'le means more effectual towards the accom- 
plishment of this desirable end, than that he should mani- 
fest a prompt willingness to meet and reciprocate with 
them all the ordinary courtesies of life, in a spirit and with 
a manner which shall show that they are something more 
than empty forms. 

Wniversitf/ of AlahcDiia^ ^i^^'A S, 185-4. 



COLL K G E G <3 V E R N ISI 1-: N T . 5 1 



LETTER VII, 



NO VIXDICATIOX OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM OF COLLEGE GOVERNMENT CAN 
BE UXIVEKSALLY SATISFACTORY ; BECAUSE, FIRST, NO SYSTEM CAN BE 
EQUALLY SUITED TO STUDENTS OF EVERY AGE ; AND, SECONDLY, THE 
POPULAR IDEA OF THE COLLEGE STUDENT IS DRAWN FROM THE CLASS 
WHO NEED LEAST TO BE GOVERNED. 

I HAVE examined those features of the system of gov- 
ernment common to the colleges of this country, which 
have been made especially the subjects of your strictures. 
If I have not removed your objections to them, I have at 
least shown that they may be j)lausibly defended. I 
think I have shown that, so long as colleges are organized 
on the existing general plan, these features present noth- 
ing unreasonable ; perhaps I may say, nothing unneces- 
sary. 

Now, were I to examine every other regulation con- 
nected with the government and discijDline of colleges to 
which exception has been taken in any quarter, and were 
I to detail with like minuteness the reasons which have 
led to the introduction of each into the code of college 
law, I have no doubt that I should be able to make as 
good a case in every instance, as I have done in the one or 
two I have considered. I ought to be able to do so, for 
these regulations have not been the creation of a day, of a 
year, or even of a century. They rest upon no foundation 
of mere opinion or judgment — not even upon the opinions 



5S LETTKKS OX 

or jiulgmeiits, nncorrected by experience, of tlie wisest 
men ; Ijut they are results wrought out by actual experi- 
ment, and by the comparison of difterent methods during 
the course of several centuries. 

Yet after all, it cannot be denied that the most unan- 
swerable vindication of the existing system of college gov- 
ernment, leaves upon the minds of many, an unsatisfied 
impression, and that the reply will continually recur — 
"But you offend the self-esteem, you mortify the pride of 
character, you wound the innate feeling of personal dig- 
nity, in a sensitive young man, by subjecting him to a 
code of regulations fit only for the government of boys." 
True, we do this ; if a young man, w^hose maturity of 
years and fixedness of principle enable him to be a law to 
himself, chooses, on joining our community, to regard our 
system of law as having been established exjDressly for 
him. But it is not for such that we legislate ; nor is it 
just to denounce our rules as oppressive, because there are 
some individuals for whom they are unnecessary. The 
difficulty is to induce the public — even the most sensible 
part of the public — to reflect, that all laws must be made 
to meet the cases of those who most need restraint, and 
not of those who need it least. 

I have already, in a former letter, mentioned the fact, 
that .the individual students who become subjects of col- 
lege discipline, are almost invariably boys. Our rules 
allow us to receive candidates for admission at the early 
age of fourteen ; and very many enter below sixteen. On 
the other hand, not a few have attained, or nearly 
attained, their majority, before becoming members of col- 



COLLEGE G O V E K N M E N T . 59 

lege ; and the consequence is, tliat we liave a community 
very heterogeneous in character, very unequal in power 
of self-command, very widely different in degree of manli- 
ness, very unfit to be all subjected to the same uniform 
regimen. In the younger classes we find usually a major- 
ity who have come directly from the schools, where their 
conduct has been subjected to the restraint of immediate 
and constant supervision. Such, even if they possess the 
power have not yet acquired the habit of self-control; 
and the almost irresistible proj^ensity of juvenile nature 
to avail itself without consideration of every accidental 
opportunity to give way to frolic mirthfulness, on the 
slightest relaxation of the severe vigilance of school super- 
vision, is carried into -the college, and is not laid aside 
until familiarity with freedom neutralizes the temptation 
to extravagance. Life in college, indeed, very rapidly 
transforms the boy into the man. In such communities, 
'especially where the numbers are large, the members of 
the several classes are almost as clearly distinguished from 
each other by outward signs of manner and deportment, 
as by reference to the official register; and acts of thought- 
less frivolity, which in the earlier years are by no means 
rare, become almost unknown to the later. 

It is a very great disadvantage of college govern- 
ment, that it can provide but one system of discipline 
for all variety of subjects; and that consequently, the 
stringent system which the more volatile — those in whom 
the boy spirit still predominates — require, is felt to be 
unreasonably oppressive and galling by the graver class 
who disdain even the suspicion of puerility. The popular 



C)0 LETT E K S ON 

idea of the colle2:e student is drawn much more from the- 
latter class than from the former; and, hence, such stric- 
tures as those of the "Register" upon the visitation of 
rooms, carry with them an appearance of weight and rea- 
son which they would hardly possess were it remembered, 
that this system does not exist for the supervision and re- 
straint of those who need no restraint, but on account of 
those others who do need it, yet cannot possibly be sepa- 
rately reached. And the same might be said of nine out 
of ten of the rules existing in colleges for the regulation 
of the student's conduct. 

It is a curious fact that, while the popular idea of the 
college student at the present day invests him very much 
Avith the character of a man — though many individual 
students are in fact but boys, — in the early history of col- 
leges, both in this country and abroad, the case was com- 
pletely the reverse, and the college or university student 
was looked uj^on and treated as a mere school-boy. It 
was this fact, indeed, which, if it did not determine the 
erection of colleges and halls in the universities, at least 
suggested the form of their organization. The Universi- 
ties of England taught only, and assumed no responsibility 
for the deportment or morals of the students. The lectu- 
rers — ultimately styled professors — did nothing, and do 
nothing to this day, but lecture ; they heard no recapitu- 
lations of the subjects by the students — that is, no recita- 
tions. But boy learners require both moral control and 
mental drilling. The colleges and halls were erected to 
subserve both these purposes. In these establishments 
the students were boarded, lodged, and kept under close 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. Gl 

supervisiou. They were each governed by a master, 
assisted by one or more tutors as necessity might require. 
It was the business of the tutor to see that the youths 
duly attended the lectures, and to interrogate them upon 
what they heard — that is, to hear them - recite. It was 
also his business to give them religious instruction, and to 
" do all that in him lay to render them comformable to 
the Church of England." In addition to this, he had the 
further rather troublesome charge of " containing his pu- 
pils within statutory regulations in matters of external 
appearance, such as their clothes, boots, and hair," with 
the somewhat unpleasant liability, in case his unmanage- 
able urchins evaded his vigilance, expressed in the follow- 
ing clause — " Which if the puj^ils are found to transgress, 
the tutor, for the first, second, and third oifense, shall for- 
feit six and eight j^ence, and for the fourth, shall be inter- 
dicted from his tutorial functions."^'* Corporal punish- 
ment was inflicted, says Sir Charles Lyell, in the English 
Universities, so late as the time of Milton. The same 
appears to have been true in the early years of Harvard 
and Yale, in this country. Down to the commencement 
of the present century, the fagging system survived in 
both those colleges — a system which rendered the stu- 
dent, during his freshman year, the drudge of his fellow- 
students above him ; and to cj[uite as late a j^eriod, the 
whole Ijody of the students were comj^elled to observances 
towards the college oflficers, which would now be held to 
be degrading, and could only then consist with the idea 

* Sir William Ilaniiltoirs Discussions on Pliilosopliy. 



02 r. ]■; T T E 11 s on 

that the stiiileut is a mere school-boy. In those primitive 
daAs, nice questions of casuistry, as to how far a student 
ma}' or may not, by his testimony, I'lghtfully or lionoral;)ly 
criminate his fellow, were unknown ; but tlie youth who 
refused to testify — if that plienomenon ever occurred — 
was neither remonstrated with nor dismissed, but simply, 
I suppose, " licked !" However, we have changed all 
that, and very propei'ly ; but so far lias the change gone, 
at the ]3resent day, that nearly all attempts on the part of 
college Faculties to use coercion of any kind, if not re- 
sisted in limine^ are at least met with remonstrance and 
complaint. 

From the foregoing statements, it is apparent that tlie 
American colleges have assumed to themselves the dou- 
ble duty, wliich, some centuries ago in England, was 
divided between college and University — the duty of 
instruction and that of government. It is true that the 
Englisli colleges bave done the same at Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, by that gradual and systematic usurj^ation by 
whicb the tutor lias supplanted tlie professor in his func- 
tions, and by whicb the college has substantially super- 
seded the University. But in undertaking this two-fold 
responsibility in this country, we liave failed as I have 
heretofore sliown, to coj^y from our models the devices 
by which they secure the ability to discharge it. Our 
college officers neither live in the same building nor eat 
at the same table with the students, nor are the premises 
shut in Ijy walls, or secured by locks and bolts. In 
the absence of these material safeguards, we have spun 
around our colleges a cob-web of words ; instead of imnie- 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 63 

diate and constant supervision, we have substituted law ; 
instead of bolts and bars, we have invoked penalties; 
instead of substantial stone and mortar, we have built our 
reliance upon a barricade of paper. What wonder that 
the merest breath sometimes bears down the barrier 
before it ! 

University of AJahama^ Avg. 10, 1854. 



6-i L E T T P: R S ON 



LETTER VIII. 



AMERICAX COLLEGES ASSUME TOO GREAT A KESPOXSIBILITY. THE COLLEGE 

SYSTEM OF THE COUXTRY, CONSIDERED AS A SYSTEM OF MORAL TRAIX- 
ING, IS A FAILURE. IS THERE ANY REMEDY ? 

Though as yet I have not explicitly stated wliat I 
believe to be the defect of our present college system, out 
of wliicli, in spite of all the prudence, caution, and fore- 
sight of the wisest officers, we may fairly expect trouble 
more or less frequently to arise, my last letter, I presume, 
can have left little doubt as to my impressions upon that 
point. But, as I wish to be distinctly understood, I shall 
not leave my oj)inion to Ije a mere matter of infer- 
ence. The simple truth is here — Americcm colleges- 
assume a responsihility ivhicli tliey have not the ])oicer ade- 
quately to discharge. They undertake not merely to train 
the mind and inform the understanding, but also to regu- 
late the conduct and protect the morals. This great 
weight of responsibility was without doubt originally 
incurred in full view of its magnitude, and of deliberate 
purpose ; but it was not incurred without a careful pro- 
vision of the means which might render its fulfillment a 
possibility. In its origin, the college was strictly a fam- 
ily, and its government was a parental despotism. Con- 
stant and immediate supervision, locks, bolts, and bars. 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 65 

and obligatory observances whicli would now be called 
degrading, stood, as I have sliown, in place of our cobweb 
laws; and for penalties, there were personal restraint, 
privation of enjoyments, cumulation of tasks, and even 
that terror of childhood, the rod itself. The system, in 
its inception, was evidently designed for boys and none 
else ; though it must be confessed that, at that primitive 
period, not only did boyhood cover a much larger space 
in human life than it does at present, but all ages sub- 
mitted without murmuring to restraints which would not 
now be tolerated for a moment. Holmes, in three lines, 
gives us a happy idea of the state of things existing in 
those days: 

" The people were not democrats then, 
They did not talk of the rights of men, 
And all that sort of thing." 

Sir AVilliam Hamilton tells us that colleges and halls 
for lay students were created " in imitation of the Hos- 
2yitia which the religious orders established in the univer- 
sity towns, for those of their members who were attracted, 
as teachers or learners, to those places of literary resort." 
It does not appear that, in the original design of the 
universities of Europe, whether British or continental, 
any control of the conduct or regulation of the morals of 
the students was contemplated at all. The researches of 
the writer just cited, make it evident that the exposures 
were very peculiar, which rendered the institution of sOme 
moral safeguards necessary. When we consider what pre- 
cisely were these exposures, as they are described in an 
extract from the Cardinal de Yitry, which Sir William 



66 I. E T T E K S O N 

("quotes but does not venture to translate, we cannot with- 
out a smile endeavor to imagine the holy horror with 
which those respectable ecclesiastics who founded the col- 
leges of Paris, must have regarded a proposition to give 
to them such a constitution as that of Yale, or Harvard, 
or Princeton, or the University of Alabama. In the view 
of those men, this constitution could not but have ren- 
dered these exposures tenfold more dangerous. In pro- 
fessing to throw up moral defenses around the youth 
committed to their charge, they aimed at realities and not 
at shadows ; in place of empty prohibitions, they erected 
physical barriers; and they provided against transgres- 
sion by the simple expedient of rendering it impossible. 
It is no part of my business to prove that they did not 
err in one direction as widely as we do in the other ; it is 
enough that I show, that, having a definite object in view, 
they adopted means to accomplish it ; while we, with the 
same object, adopt next to none at all. We have aban- 
doned supervision — we have discarded the family arrange- 
ment — we have given up the college cloisters to the 
almost exclusive control of their juvenile occupants. No 
Cerberus in the form of a janitor guards the college gates 
— no blank, uncompromising wall shuts in the academic 
court — no "fat professor or lean and ghostly tutor" (I 
think I quote you correctly) glides along the passages — 
no shooting-bolt, as tolls the college curfew, obstructs all 
further commerce with the external world. In place of 
all these securities, we have introduced a single substi- 
tute : it is law ; and it has failed. I do not find especially 
the evidence of this failure in acts of insubordination, of 



C L L E a E G O Y E R N :\r E N T . 67 

whicli — of such at least as are serious — the occurrence is 
after all but rare ; but I find, in my own personal experi- 
ence as a student, and in my observation both as a stu- 
dent and as an officer, conclusive j^roof that the system of 
government existing in American colleges, considered as 
a system of moral restraint, is all but worthless. My own 
convictions would justify me in using even stronger lan- 
guage than this. To me it has all the character of an 
ascertained fact, a matter of immediate knowledge and 
not of inference or information, that initiation into the 
charmed collegial circle is, morally, rather a release from 
old restraints, than an imposition of new ones. The pub- 
lic eye no longer rests upon the neophyte ; public opinion 
no longer encourages, intimidates, or guides him ; he is, 
except for flagrant crime, substantially absolved from alle- 
giance to the laws of the land ; and, between him and the 
only authority which he does acknowledge, is interposed 
that unwritten " higher law " of colleges, the law of the 
Bursclienscliaft^ which enables him to defy investigation, 
and baffle inquiry. 

Is it reasonable to expect good to grow out of a sys- 
tem like this ? And if young men emerge spotless from 
the ordeal of a college life, is it not plain that they do so, 
not in consequence of the system, but in spite of it ? Vice 
and crime would be unknown but for temptation ; temp- 
tation would usually be powerless but for opportunity. 
Youthful passions rarely fail to find the first ; the Ameri- 
can college system furnishes the second in its amplest 
form. 

This system also, is such as to open to evil example a 



68 L E T T E 11 S ON 

lield for the most powerfully pernicious influence. If 
Satan, in Lis fall, drew after liim a tliird part of the host 
of Heaven, much more is it to be expected that one of his 
ministers on earth may lead astray no small proportion of 
a community of inconsiderate and impulsive young men. 
Social sympathy — the feeling of companionship — will 
often carry a youth along, where his conscience forbids 
him to go. If he betrays his scruples, he soon learns to 
blush with mortification at the ridicule they excite. What 
should naturally follow, but that he should presently 
cease to have a conscience at all ? Truly it seems to me, 
that, had it been the original design of the college system, 
instead of guarding the morals of young men, to expose 
them to danger, and instead of watching over them, to 
abandon them to the protection of chance, a scheme more 
happily devised to efl:ect this object could not have been 
sketched out. It has maintained its ground to this day 
through an unquestioning veneration of antiquity, though 
every feature that recommended it to the men of olden 
time, by whose wisdom it was planned, has long since 
been abandoned. Could now all recollection of the past be 
effaced, and could the question be brought up before the 
present generation as one entirely new, what ought to be 
the oro:anization of an institution desis^ned for the educa- 
tion of youth and the cjuardianslii^ of their morals^ I have 
not the least idea that the system now so all but univer- 
sally prevalent would obtain the vote of a single man of 
sense in the entire civilized world. 

Is there any remedy ? Certainly there is. It -v^-ould 
be a remedy — not one perhaps accordant with the sj^irit 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT, 69 

of the age, nor likely to prove economical, but a remedy, 
nevertheless — to return to the system of the English 
schools of learning, as it existed down to the eighteenth 
century, to revive the distinction between University and 
College, to separate the business of mental culture from 
that of moral training, and to re-establish the wide difter- 
ence between the functions of professor and tutor. Un- 
der this system, government, besides being rendered effec- 
tual by all the expedients I have specified, might be 
divided with us, as it was (and is yet) at Oxford and 
Cambridge, between many Colleges and Halls, and in- 
struction could be given for the Avhole by a single corps 
of Professors, constituting the University Faculties. By 
this subdivision of the student body, the difficulty of con- 
trolling the whole would be much reduced. At Oxford, 
early in the fourteenth century, as Sir William Hamilton 
informs us, the number of halls and colleofes was about 
three hundred ; and at the present time, it is twenty-four. 
A recent visitor at that celebrated seat of learning informs 
us that no Oxford college has more than about one hun- 
dred and forty students, while some have as few as ten. 
Since the total number of students in the University is 
about fifteen hundred, it is evident that any difficulties 
which may arise in the government of a particular college, 
even though they should be aggravated to the point of 
rebellion, could produce no sensible eftect upon the gen- 
eral tranquillity of the University. 

In this country and in this age, however, a variety of 
causes render a resort to a remedy like this entirely 
impracticable. Every thing in our political principles and 

6 



L E T T E R S ON 



our federal organization opposes concentration. All relig- 
ions denominations stand here upon the same footing, and 
all of them ivill^ whether it be well or ill for the cause of 
education in the end, have schools and colleges for the 
education of their own children, in the hands of teachers 
of their own persuasion. Such a thing as a privileged 
University, like those of England and France, could not 
exist here. And, moreover, the spirit of the age, impa- 
tient as it is of restraints even the most salutary, wonld 
not sanction the restoration of the prison-like quadrangle 
and the compulsory regularity of hours. The college 
would probably be deserted, and the experiment would 
fail. It is hardly necessary, therefore, to superadd the 
objection, that the remedy suggested would require a 
total reconstruction of all the college buildings in the 
country. 

Is there no other remedy ? There is one to which, 
little favor as it may find at present, especially with col- 
leges which have invested large sums in costly buildings, 
I sincerely believe that the whole country will come at 
last : it is to ahandon the cloister system entirel}^, and with 
it the attempt to do, what is now certainly done only in 
pretense, to watch over the conduct and protect the 
morals of the student. I am aware that this is high 
ground to take. Deeply satisfied as I have been, from 
the day I became a freshman in college to the present 
hour, of the vast evil and the little good inherent in the 
prevalent system of government in American colleges, I 
perhaps should not even yet have felt emboldened to 
speak out so publicly my convictions, in the face of the 



COLLEGE G O V E R N M E 2n" T . 71 

quiet contentment witli wliicli my compeers and tlie pub- 
lic everywhere apparently regard the existing state of 
things, had not one of the most eminent of our American 
educators long since condemned the system as j)ublicly 
and as decidedly as I have done, and ujDon the same 
grounds. Eut Dr. Wayland, though he exhibits the evils 
which necessarily attend this system, in a manner irresisti- 
bly conclusive, hesitates to pronounce them sufficient to 
call for or to justify the abandonment of buildings already 
erected to serve as residences for college students. He 
confines himself to deprecating the erection of any more. 
I am disposed to take one step further. I say that Dr. 
Wayland himself has proved the system to be so pernic- 
ious, as to require that the ax should ibe laid directly at 
the root of it, no matter what the expense may be. But 
this subject requires a letter to itself. 

University of Alctbama^ Aug. 12, 1851. 



72 LET T K K S O X 



LETTER IX. 



EVILS OF RESIDENCE IX DORMITORIES. SYNOPSIS OF DR. -VVAVLAND's 

VIEWS ON THIS SUBJECT; 



If I have dwelt much upon the moral and material 
securities with which the founders of the colleges at the 
English Universities sought to surround those institutions, 
I have done so only that I might render more striking by 
contrast our entire deficiency in those most important 
respects. But I am by no means unaware that all those 
stringent provisions have, by the entire disregard of their 
original design, which has grown out of modern abuses at 
Oxford and Cambridge, become, in those renowned seats 
of learning, entirely nugatory. I am aware that, to an 
outside observer at the present day, an English University 
would present rather the appearance of an abode of lux- 
ury, a precinct consecrated to physical enjoyment, than 
that of a chosen retreat of science, or a habitation of the 
Muses. I draw my illustration not from the Oxford of 
the nineteenth but from the Oxford of the thirteenth cen- 
tury ; I speak of the usages, not of the twenty-four stately 
palaces of ease and dissipation which still exist ; but of 
the three hundred halls, now nearly all extiuct, where, in 
the time of the First Edward, thirty thousand youth bowed 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. T3" 

their necks to the austere yoke of monastic rule. In 
those days, a wine-bibbing, dinner-giving, " tandem-driv- 
ing, hunting, steeple-chasing, and horse-racing" Oxford 
student was unknown ; but it was no uncommon spectacle, 
according to Sir James Nore, to see " the poor scholars of 
Oxford a-begging, with bags and wallets, and singing 
Salve Recjina^ at rich men's doors."""* Those were the 
days when moral restraints in the Universities of England 
were a reality : — now they can scarcely be said any longer 
to exist. 

I stated in my last letter that Dr. Way land had 
thrown the weight of his high authority in opposition to 
the plan of providing buildings for the residence of stu- 
dents in an isolated community, during their college life. 
What he has so well said I would not venture to repeat, 
nor to what he has said would I add a single word, were 
it possible or probable that the persons whom these let- 
ters will reach would find access to his able examination 
of the same subject. The improbability of that, justifies 
me in repeating some of his arguments. In addition to the 
views which I have already presented. Dr. Wayland urges 
against the arrangements of the prevailing system, that 
they are unnatural. They remove the young from the 
enjoyment and benefit of family sympathies and society, 
at a time of life when these are of the highest value. 
They deprive them of that watchful attention, in time of 
sickness, and of that heedful care, in time of health, which 
are so important at this early age ; and which in their new 

* Princeton Review, Jul}', 1854. 



74 L E T T E K S ON 

position there will be none to bestow. Moreover, in pass- 
ing from tlie family circle into tlie artificial society of a 
college, there is at present a rude and harsh transition 
from a position in which they are sustained and guided 
by the counsel and solicitude of those on whom they are 
accustomed to rely, to one in which, as it must be in the 
great world at last, they have but themselves to consult 
and depend on, in every emergency. The transition is 
too abrupt to be courted, or to be probably beneficial. 

Dr. Wayland further finds, in the unequal ages of the 
students who make up the college community, a reason 
for objecting to the cloister system. Small as is the 
amount of supervision, which the most anxious and vigi- 
lant Faculties can exercise over young men so situated, it 
is more than those of their pupils who are most advanced 
in years require. To prescribe to such their times for 
going and coming, or for study and relaxation; and to 
subject them to the necessity, little less than mortifying, 
of applying for special permission to do even so simple an 
act as to call upon a friend, or to that of rendering an ex- 
cuse for receiving one at an hour not privileged by the 
rules, when by the laws of the land and the usages of 
society they are recognized as capable of self-government, 
seems as unnecessary as it is apparently odious. And 
yet, in a society where there can be but one rule for all, 
such regulations cannot be dispensed with ; while the 
greater difficulty is, on the other hand, to make them 
stringent enougli to meet the case of those who have no 
habits of self-government as yet established at all. This 
latter class, in truth, can never be adequately provided 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 75 

for under our present college system ; and the sooner we 
distinctly and candidly admit the fact, the better. If 
there be a student who requires the direct influence and 
prompting of a superior, whether to stimulate him to ex- 
ertion, or (a rarer case, certainly, but one not very uncom- 
mon) to restrain him from too severe and injurious appli- 
cation, whether to aid him in the prosecution of his 
studies, or to guide him in the selection of his miscella- 
neous reading, or to advise him in the choice of his amuse- 
ments, or to warn him against the appro ches of tempta- 
tion, or to arrest him in his first downward steps, should 
he unhapj)ily incline toward vice, such a student is not 
conveniently or favorably or even safely situated in the 
heart of an American college, where no superior, however 
zealously devoted to his welfare, can know his habits, his 
wants, or his dangers. 

The influence of our arrangements upon health is fur- 
thermore regarded by Dr. Wayland. to be more or less 
injurious. The compactness of the community, and the 
confinement of all the necessary duties within a very nar- 
row precinct, if they do not directly discourage and pre- 
vent the bodily exercise so important to the full vigor of 
the animal system, hold out at least no inducement to its 
practice. No trivial number of the cases in which stu- 
dents withdraw from colleges with impaired health or 
broken constitutions, are cases in which disease has been 
either engendered, or at least aggravated, by neglect of 
suitable exercise. The arrangements of college buildings 
afford few conveniences or comforts, in cases of sickness ; 
and should an infectious disease make its appearance, it is 



76 L E T T E R S O N 

clifficiilt if not impossible to prevent its spreading tlirougli 
the entire community. 

In looking at this question in its moral aspects, 
Dr. Wayland takes altogether the view which I have 
already presented. He enforces his opinion by one or 
two considerations which seem to me to have a peculiar 
importance. In regard to the dangerous influence of evil 
example, he observes that the votaries of vice are much 
more zealous in making proselytes than the devotees of 
virtue. No remark could be more emphatically or more 
sadly true. There is apparently a malignant pleasure felt 
by the vile in marking the gradual steps by which the 
pure in heart become wicked like themselves ; and it is 
■with, a sort of fiendish ingenuity that they invent allure- 
ments and ply seductive arts, to the end that they may 
ruin where they profess to befriend. The unsuspicious, 
unreflecting natures of ingenuous youth, make them espe- 
cially prone to yield to those whose greater familiarity 
with what is called life, but is in fact too often only the 
road to death, gives them a seeming superiority and lends 
to their opinions and their example a most mischievous 
fascination. Some such, we may say with too unfortunate 
a certainty, will usually be found wherever one or two 
hundred young men are assembled together as members 
of the same community. Some such will, indeed, have 
been almost unavoidably attracted to our colleges, by the 
peculiar social features which they present ; and by the 
imdeniable fact, which I have heretofore illustrated, that 
the college is a place of freedom rather than of restraint. 
Is there not here an exposure dangerous to every unsophis- 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 77 

ticated yoiitli, and liable too often to become aljsolutely 
ruinous ? 

It is further observed by Dr. Wayland, that where a 
number of persons are collected together, and by the cir- 
cumstances of their association are disconnected almost 
wholly from the surrounding world, there will inevitably 
come to be recognized among them certain peculiar prin- 
ciples of action, there will come to be received certain 
peculiar convictions of duty, which are not elsewhere rec- 
ognized, but derive their character from that of the com- 
munity among whom they originate. So striking an illus- 
tration of this truth has been presented in the discussion 
which occupied the earlier letters of the present series, 
that I consider any further explanation of the meaning of 
the foregoing proposition unnecessary. It is sufficient to 
say that, in the college code, the highest honor is not 
bestowed upon that which is good and right; nor the 
sternest disapprobation awarded to that which is bad and 
wrong. To be gentlemanly, is better than to be moral ; 
to be generous, is better than to be just. It is much to be 
doubted whether a protracted residence in a moral atmos- 
phere, characterized by the j^i'^valence of doctrines like 
these, can exert a healthy influence upon the character ; 
or whether the usages to which it familiarizes the youth 
are such as to render the man either better or happier. 

Dr. Wayland does not forget to glance at the preju- 
dicial effect which the long-continued intercourse of young 
men, exclusively or nearly so, with each other, cannot fail 
to exert upon their manners ; to which I might add the 
tendency, so constantly noticed that I suppose it must be 



78 L E T T E K S ON 

esteemed inevitable, of the language of their conversation, 
nnder similar circumstances, to degenerate into rudeness, 
or something even worse. That men will be rude, that 
they will be vulgar, occasionally, without having these 
propensities developed and nourished in them by any spe- 
cies of hot-house culture, and in spite of all the purifying- 
influences of the best society, I am well aware ; but that 
is no reason why, without any manifest necessity, we 
should exjDose all our young men who aspire to a high 
order of education, to an influence which can hardly fail 
to blunt, to some extent at least, their native delicacy, or 
vitiate their sense of what constitutes true politeness. 

"While thus every argument derived from the fitness 
of things, and from considerations of health, of morals, and 
of manners, seems directly to condemn the college cloister 
system prevalent in this country, hardly, I think, on the 
other hand, will a single substantial advantage be found 
to recommend it. That it is cheaper to the student, Dr. 
"Wayland has, in my opinion, satisfactorily disjDroved. 
That it is immensely more expensive to the public at 
large, where colleges are created and sustained by their 
munificence, he has made equally evident. Indeed, where 
money to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars or 
more, has, in a single institution, been invested in dormi- 
tories alone, and where, as in the University of Alabama, 
not one sinsrle dollar of revenue is derived from this 
investment, in the way of rent or otherwise, it requires no 
argument to show that, if the dormitories are unnecessary, 
all this is a dead loss. In our own particular case, it is 
worse than a dead loss; for not only do these buildings 



COLLEGE a V E R N :M E N T , T9 

return no income to tlie treasury, but they keep up a con- 
tinued drain upon it, to tlie extent of several hundred 
dollars per annum, to preserve them in decent repair, and 
in tolerably habitable condition. Is there a single j)lausi- 
ble reason to be urged in favor of the perpetuation of 
such a system, but the unfortunate fact that it cannot now 
be abandoned here without a heavy pecuniary loss ? 

UniversiUj of Alalama^ Aug. 15, 185-4. 



80 L K T T E K S <D N 



LETTER X. 



EVILS OF THE DOKMITOKY Si'STEM FURTHER EXAMINED. ITS TEXDEXCV TO 

MAKE THE INTELLECTUAL QUALIFICATIONS OF INSTRUCTORS A SECOND- 
ARV CONSIDERATION. IS IT POSSIBLE TO ABOLISH THE SYSTEM ? 



The evils wMcli I have tliiis far considered as resulting 
from the system of residence common in American col- 
leges, are such as proceed from the direct influences 
exerted by the system on the student himself In former 
letters of this series I have, however, pointed out to what 
extent the successful administration of college government 
is dependent upon the personal character and disposition 
of the officers who conduct it ; yet this dependency, it is 
now evident, is almost entirely a consequence of that pecu- 
liar organization of our academic society, out of which so 
many other evils grow. It is certainly at present an ur- 
gent necessity, in the selection of persons to fill the respon- 
sible posts of instructors in colleges, to give anxious atten- 
tion to considerations very different from those which 
(Qualify a man to impart knowledge, or render him likely, 
by his reputation, to give character to the institution of 
which he becomes a member. Yet these latter considera- 
tions are undeniably, in intrinsic importance, paramount 
to all others. It is a simple truism to say that to be a 



COLLEGE G O V E E N M E X T . 81 

good teaclier, one must first of all tilings know how to 
teach; but it by no means follows that to be a success/ id 
college teacher^ the same qualification will stand in the 
foremost rank of importance. Profundity of learning, 
fluency .of language, fertility of invention, and felicity of 
illustration, are hopelessly buried, so far as college useful- 
ness is concerned, in one who possesses not the art to con- 
ciliate, or the power to control, or the faculty to stimulate, 
or the wisdom to advise, those with whom he is constantly 
in contact in the relation of a moral governor or guide. 
These qualities are no doubt of great value under any cir- 
cumstances; but it is a peculiarity arising out of the 
nature and magnitude of the responsibility we are com- 
pelled to assume, which places them, in colleges organized 
as ours are, so far above those intellectual endowments 
and acquisitions which we naturally associate with the 
character of an able teacher. 

It is very certain that much of the success of a colle- 
giate institution, in the popular sense of the word, depends 
upon the consideration in which its officers are held as 
men of letters and science, in the community from which 
it draws its patronage. There is no virtue in vested funds, 
or costly buildings, or legislative grants, or even in libra- 
ries and cabinets and apparatus of science, however mag- 
nificent, to attract to a particular spot such multitudes of 
interested and willing learners as throng some of the favor- 
ite colleges of the United States. No allurements which 
wealth can spread out have power to draw disciples 
around the academic chairs of teachers who are them- 
selves deficient in that moral magnetism which nature only 



82 L E T T E R S ON 

can bestow. Nor will this or tliat form of internal organ- 
ization, or a more or less severe aclliesion to any particular 
routine of instruction, to any imjDortant degree determine 
how far any given set of men, in any given school of learn- 
ing, may be successful in securing that evidence of popular 
approbation, which numbers are commonly supposed to 
aftbrd. 

It is certainly, then, in the very highest degree desira- 
ble that in the selection of men to fill the very responsible 
positions of officers of instruction in colleges, there should 
be nothing in the nature of the duties they are to be re- 
quired to discharge, which shall prevent the very first con- 
sideration from being given to their mental qualities and 
acquisitions, their learning and their power of luminous 
utterance, — qualities which, while they make them able 
and successful and often fascinating in the lecture-room, 
render their names also household w^ords in the dwellings 
of the people. Suppose a board of governors to be un- 
trammeled by any considerations such as these, in the 
choice of individuals to fill the chairs which may become 
successively vacant in a college under their control, or the 
new chairs which they may create ; suppose, further, that 
they have it in their power to offer a remuneration suffi- 
cient to command the services of the most eminent talent 
the country can furnish ; suppose that they make known, 
as they naturally will on every such occasion as widely as 
possible, the existence of the vacancy, and invite competi- 
tion from men of ability, every where, to fill it ; they can 
hardly, under these circumstances, fiiil to secure not only 
able men, but men whom the people know to be able. 
Such men will never be deserted, unless for men of greater 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 83 

presumed ability; and thus tliere will be maintained, 
between all institutions governed by these principles, an 
honorable and advantageous emulation, which will secure 
to each a gratifying popularity, and a fair and» encouraging 
amount of patronage. 

So long, however, as the first quality to be looked 
after in a college officer is not in his ability, nor his learn- 
ing, nor his well-earned reputation as a man of letters or 
science, but his capacity for governing youth, and for 
managing all the complications which arise out of the ad- 
ministration of the internal police and penal laws of our 
artificial form of society, there is no absolute security that 
the men selected will be eminently able, or that they will 
have that hold on the confidence of the surrounding com- 
munity which springs from an already established acquaint- 
ance with their names and characters. They may even 
be, and they often are, entirely unknown ; and thus, in 
cases of difficulty, they have to contend against that indif- 
ference in the public mind which is usually felt towards 
such as have only the stranger's claim to sympathy. I do 
not forget that reputation is a growth of time ; and that, 
when a valuable college officer is secured, it is all the bet- 
ter that he is secured young. But I much question 
whether an individual can have had time to manifest that 
moral fitness to grapple with the difficult resj^onsibilities 
which a college officer has to encounter, and which is un- 
der our system so indispensable, at an age earlier than 
that at which his intellectual superiority, if he possesses it, 
begins to lift him above the level of common men. 

Our system of obligatory residence, therefore, in build- 



84 L E T T E R S O X 

ings specially erected for college purposes, involves the 
great evil of much restricting the freedom of choice, on the 
part of electing boards, in providing suitable officers for 
the institutions under their care. And since that system 
seems really to be recommended by no positive advan- 
tages, but to be open, on the other hand, to the very grave 
objections which I have endeavored in my foregoing let- 
ters to exhibit, we find in this last consideration a forcible 
arsrument in favor of its total abolishment. 

But suppose this system of compulsory residence abol- 
ished, what is the alternative ? Let the students find their 
own residences, as all other persons do, young or old, 
wherever they can, among the citizens of the surrounding 
community. They are now in the community but not of 
it. The college walls present an impenetrable barrier to 
all scrutiny of their conduct and actions. They are not 
subject to the restraining influences of public opinion. 
One of the strongest moral safeguards known to mankind 
has na existence for them. We have seen that the pre- 
sumed surveillance of college government is nothing but a 
nullity. By closing our dormitories and sending back our 
students into the world, we abrogate for them the freedom 
of the microcosm, and re-subject them to the common 
restraints of society. This expression, the freedom of the 
microcosm, which drops accidentally from my pen, sug- 
gests, by similarity of sound, another phrase which we 
sometimes hear in our metroi:)olitan towns — the freedom 
of the city. What this freedom is, precisely, at the pres- 
ent day, I do not know ; but it is now and then presented, 
sometimes with pomp and ceremony, to the favored 



COLLEGE G O V E R N IM E N T . 85 

guests of the municipal authorities. Now, if any thing 
could be wanted to demonstrate the truth of what I have 
asserted — that admission into college is rather an intro- 
duction to freedom than a subjection to restraints, — it may 
be found in the fact that young men who are not students 
are sometimes, by their friends among the initiated, in- 
vested with this freedom also, — not with ceremony, nor by 
any explicit form of words, but by being introduced 
within the privileged limits, and made temporary denizens 
of the charmed circle. Here, secure from the reach of 
any prying eye from without, and unmoved by shadows 
which possible coming " exculpations " sometimes cast be- 
fore them ujDon the spirits of legitimate residents, they 
are ready to lend their efficient aid in j)romoting any dis- 
orders which may incidentally spring up, and they join 
with especial unction, as occasion arises, in those vocal and 
tintinnabulary performances with which youth, in seasons 
of excitement, seem to delight to " make night hideous." 
I do not know to what extent the officers of collecres else- 
where may have remarked this evil ; and I do know that 
in some places there is little congeniality or intercourse 
between " town and gown ;" but I have no idea that any 
college constructed on the plan popular in this country is 
entirely exempt from the nuisance, and I am persuaded 
that the University of Alabama has occasionally suffered 
from it deeply. 

But when I propose that our dormitories shall be 

closed, and our students shall be left to provide residences 

for themselves among the citizens of the neighborhood, I 

anticipate the reply that my remedy, however plausible in 

7 



S6 I^ K T T E R S «3 N 

theory, will iu many cases, and notably in that of the Uni- 
versity of Alabama, be impracticable. Not only is this 
institution situated an entire mile beyond the corporate 
limits of the city of Tuscaloosa, but, by an intentional pre- 
caution of the Board of Trustees, it holds the title to 
nearly every square foot of land for at least a quarter of a 
mile in every direction around it; and thus repels the 
approach of those who might be disposed to build in its 
vicinity. The default of a social neighborhood might of 
course be repaired, by removing this restriction, provided 
there were any disposition to build ; but as none such has 
been manifested hitherto, and none such is likely to be 
awakened by any immediately existing causes, my pro- 
posed remedy is, I admit, only applicable to the case of 
this University, on the condition that the center of its 
operations be transferred to the heart of the town. The 
sacrifice of the buildings now used as dormitories, and their 
abandonment, if necessary, to ruin, would be well repaid 
by the much higher benefits which would attend the 
change. It would, in point of fact, be no sacrifice at all, 
since, as I have heretofore stated, these dormitories return 
no income for the large investment wrapped up in them, 
but require, on the other hand, a considerable annual 
expenditure to keep them in repair. But the proposed 
removal would involve a more serious sacrifice than this. 
The buildings erected to subserve the purposes of instruc- 
tion, and which embrace the library, the laboratory, the 
cabinets of minerals, rocks and fossils, the lecture rooms, 
and all the rooms for recitations, to say nothing of the 
dwellings of the officers, would not only have to be aban- 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 87 

donecl here, but replaced in the new locality. The ques- 
tion how far this consideration must be regarded as tend- 
ing to make the proposed reform hopeless, I reserve for 
examination hereafter. 

University of Alabama^ Aug. 16, 1854. 



88 L E T T E K S N 



LETTER XI. 



EXPEIUMENT PROPOSED FOR THE CASE OF THE VMVEKSITV OF ALAHAMA. 
CONSIDERATION AVHICH SEEMS TO HAVE DETERMINED THE CHOICE OF 

LOCATION FOR MOST OF THE COLLEGES OF THE UNITED STATES. ITS 

FALLACY. THE DORMITORY SVSTEM WILL BE ABANDONED ; BUT ONLY 

VERY GRADUALLY. 

In my last communication I maintained tliat the 
proper remedy for most of tlie evils -wliicli attend the 
administration of college government, and wliicli tend to 
affect injuriously the morals of the youth who are subject 
to it, as well as indirectly to detract, perhaps, somewhat 
from the consideration which their officers are likely to 
command from the public, is an entire abandonment of 
the cloister or dormitory plan of residence. I admitted 
the difficulty of doing this in cases where the college is, 
like the University of Alabama, separated by a consider- 
able space from any community capable of furnishing the 
accommodations which the college itself ceases to suj^plj*. 
I had the question under inquiry, how far the considera- 
tion of the great sacrifice of property which must usually 
attend the removal of such an institution, though the 
removal should be but for a mile or two, is likely to ren- 
der the proposed remedy impracticable. I do not purpose 
to hazard any general decision of this cjuestion, further 
than to remark that, so great are the advantages which 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 89' 

the presence of a school of hxrge resort usually brings to 
the town in which it is situated, that when the trustees of 
a popular college manifest a serious disposition to remove 
it, the expenses attendant on the erection of new buildings 
are not likely to fall upon themselves. Be this as it may, 
the University of Alabama possesses a special advantage 
for the trial of an experiment of the kind I have pro- 
posed. It is not necessary, in order to make such a trial, 
to abandon even the dormitories at once. By the liber- 
ality of the Legislature of the State, the large and sub- 
stantial building formerly occupied as the State capitol, 
has been made the property of the University. Now, for 
several years, it has been true, that the number of stu- 
dents here has been too great to find convenient accom- 
modations in the dormitories ; and in consequence of this 
fact, the Board of Trustees, one year ago, resolved on the 
erection of an additional building. An appropriation was 
made which was presumed to be adequate, plans were 
drawn, specifications prepared, and proposals invited, by 
public advertisement, for the execution of the work. 
None of the proposals fell within the limit of the appro- 
priation, and consequently no contract was made. At 
their session in July last, the Board were unable, for want 
of a quorum, to reconsider the subject ; but the necessity 
for some additional accommodations to meet the wants of 
the students is no less urgent than it has been heretofore. 
Now, instead of burying an additional fifteen thousand 
dollars by the side of the one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars which they have already buried here in brick and 
mortar, let the board devote five thousand, if that sum be 



DO L E T T E R S O N 

necessary, to tlie restoration of the State-house (an infi- 
nitely better building than the very best that stands upon 
the University campus) to a condition fit to serve for college 
purposes ; and let them then provide that the senior class, 
to begin with, shall attend all their exercises there. This 
senior class will of necessity be obliged to find lodgings in 
town. They will relieve the pressure on the dormitories, 
which occasionally now makes those buildings absolutely 
unpleasant residences ; and an experiment, on a limited 
scale, of the advantages arising from subjecting young 
men to that direct influence of public opinion which serves 
as a more wholesome restraint than any that a college 
faculty can exercise over the occujoants of college cloisters, 
will be made without disadvantage to any one. There 
will be saved, too, at least ten thousand dollars, which is 
now in a fair way to be sunk in that gulf of unprofitable 
investment, where so many kindred thousands have 
already been swallowed up for ever. 

Should the result of this experiment prove satisfac- 
tory — and that it would, I entertain no doubt whatever — 
the junior class might next be transferred to the city in 
like manner. Should all the classes ultimately be re- 
moved — and whether they would or not I believe would 
depend upon the manner in which the demand for lodg- 
ings should be met in town — it would matter little what 
should become of the buildings standing on the college 
campus. For every purpose connected with instruction, 
the State-house, in its transformed condition, would pre- 
sent ample accommodations and facilities ; and, remarka- 
ble as the fact may seem, it would furnish to the library 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 91 

and to all the departments of physical science except 
astronomy, vastly more suitaUe and more convenient 
accommodations than any which can be fonnd in the build- 
ings on the University grounds, and toliich were erected 
specially for the purposes to which they are devoted. This 
is one of the happy results of employing men to build for 
special purposes who do not understand the purposes for 
which they build. 

Here, then, for the case of the University of Alabama, 
I offer a definite and specific plan. And as the trustees of 
this University are shortly to be in session again ; and, as 
they cannot escape or evade the question what shall be 
done to relieve the pressure on the dormitories, I earnestly 
solicit their attention to this proposition, before they re- 
solve to entangle the institution still more inextricably 
than it is at present, in the meshes of a bad system. 

It seems to be by the accident that we possess the 
abandoned State capitol, that a mode of ultimate relief 
from the trammels of our j^resent organization is easily 
opened to us. But many others, situated precisely like 
ourselves, have not a similar advantage. It is worth while 
inquiring how came we, how came they, originally to be 
in such a situation ? How came so many of us to occupy 
situations chosen evidently in each case iipon some uni- 
form i^rinciple of selection (since the peculiarities are 
every where the same), and what is this principle ? We 
find, first, that a large number of the colleges of our coun- 
try are planted in retired and quiet portions of the inte 
rior ; and secondly, that instead of being placed in the 



92 L E T T E R S O N 

midst of any eoinmimlty, even tliat of a small country 
village, tliey are situated at some moderate distance from 
sucli a spot, sufficient to be measured by a walk of per- 
haps half an hour. There has evidently been a common 
design in all this, and it is clearly traceable to a fear of 
the dangerous temptations which are presumed to lie in 
wait for youth, wherever human beings are gathered 
together in society. These temptations are greater in 
large towns ; therefore large towns are, first of all, sedu- 
lously avoided. They are not absent even from small 
towns and villages ; therefore small towns and villages are 
in like manner tabooed. Yet as neither young men nor 
their instructors can conveniently live cut off from all com- 
munication with their fellow beings, the neighborhood of 
the lesser town is tolerated ; but it is held at such a conve- 
nient distance that, if it possesses any allurements to lead 
young men astray, such yielding youths can find them out 
without any trouble at all, and enjoy them with that sat- 
isfaction of conscious security which arises out of the 
knowledge that their instructors and guardians are quietly 
housed a mile and a half off. The fact is, that all this 
reasoning, from beginning to end, is founded in the most 
mistaken impressions in the world. The temptations of 
great cities do not corruj)t the youth of great cities, any 
more than the differing, but no less real, ones of the coun- 
try, as a general rule, corrupt the youth of the country. 
The grand melo-drama which is placarded all over Eoyal 
street in Mobile, arrests no eager glance from the Mobile 
lad as he passes along on his way to his schoolboy tasks. 



COLLEGE G V E R K M E N T . 93 

Familiarity breeds contempt, indifference, unconsciousness. 
And so it is with all other presumed fascinations of the 
same nature. In like manner, young men from abroad, 
sent to commercial towns to become initiated into the 
ways of trade, though entirely free to dispose of their 
evenings as they please, do not more frequently contract 
bad habits in such places, than students in our most seclu- 
ded collesjes. Facts further demonstrate that there is ac- 
tually less complaint of irregularity and dissipation in 
those colleges in cities which have no dormitories, than is 
often heard in those country institutions where compul- 
sory residence in college buildings is a feature of the 
system. This is true of Columbia College and the City 
University, in New York; and also, according to Dr. 
Wayland, of the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, 
in Scotland. 

To this false notion, therefore, of what the moral 
safety of young men in college requires, we evidently owe 
the location of so many of these institutions in situations 
Avhere the provision of dormitories for the accommodation 
of students is an absolute necessity, and where a change 
of system without a change of site is quite impossible. 
The evil in many cases is done ; and the money that has 
thus been, as it seems to me, lamentably wasted, cannot 
now be restored. But it is to be hoped that a similar 
perversion of means which might be so much more wisely 
employed, will not continue hereafter to be made — or not 
at least to so great an extent. It is doubtless too much 
to expect that in all, or even in many, of the institutions 



94 I- E T T ]•: K S O N 

so unfortunately situated, there will he any very early 
change of plan. The conviction that a change is desirable 
is far from being yet universal ; and if it were so, the 
means for effecting the change could not be immediately 
forthcoming, nor perhaps could they be obtained at all. 
The needed work of reformation must evidently be a work 
of time ; and not only that, but of a great deal of time. 
It may be expected to be accomplished somewhat in the 
followins^ manner. Those institutions which shall do 
away with the cloister system, and those new ones which 
shall be erected without ever adopting it, will become, 
w^ith the progress of information, so much more the favor- 
ites of the people than the rest, that these latter will, 
one after another, be compelled to reform themselves, in 
order that they may maintain any thing like an equal 
comj)etition for the public patronage. By degrees, there- 
fore, change will make its way into all those institutions 
in which it is a possibility ; while for those in which it is 
not, no alternative will remain but to dwindle away and 
perish. It may take a century to accomplish all this; 
but that it will be accomplished, I entertain not the 
slightest doubt. 

Twelve years have now passed since Dr. Wayland 
published his judicious views on this subject to the world. 
That his little volume has been effectual in preventing 
much financial folly of which the country would other- 
wise have been guilty, in connection with college build- 
ings, there can be no doubt ; but the frequent evidences 
which appear that there is still work of this kind to be 



COLLEGE G O V E K N M E N T . 95 

done, sufficiently prove that tlie perusal of this valuable 
book has not yet been quite universal. If through the 
medium of these letters I accomplish no other good than 
to draw attention to an authority so much more compe- 
tent to pronounce upon subjects of this kind than I am, I 
shall be satisfied that my labor has been well spent. 

University of Alabama^ Aug. 17, 1854. • 



96 L K T T E R S ON 



LETTER XII. 



rOSlTIVE ADVANTAGES OF LARGE TOWNS AS SITES FOH SEMINARIES OF 
LEARNING. CONCLUSION. 

Having expressed tlie opinion tliat the consideration 
wliicli appears to liave determined the location of so 
many of our colleges in situations remote from large 
towns, is without any substantial foundation, I should 
leave the discussion of the subject incomplete, should I 
fail to point out some of the advantages which such towns 
possess as sites of seminaries of learning, and which appear 
to have been almost entirely overlooked. The simple 
advantage already adverted to that they afford convenient 
accommodations to students, in regard to board and lodg- 
ing, though the first to arise in the course of my argu- 
ment, is far from being the first in point of importance. 
There are others so obvious that it would seem impossible 
they should be disregarded, had we not the fact before us 
that they are so, in probably a majority of cases. Some 
of these, in their influence upon the prosperity and useful- 
ness of an institution for the education of young men, are 
so far above the imaginary security to morals which is 
believed to be found in the retirement of the country, as 
to demand from the founders of such institutions the very 
earliest attention, and to yield to no consideration what- 
ever save the single one of healthfulness. That the spot 



COLLEGE G O ^' E K N M E N T . 97 

selected as tlie site of a University should be free from 
liability to frequent visits of epidemic or pestilential dis- 
eases, is of course a condition paramount to every otber. 
But next to this should obviously come a regard for the 
convenience of tlie people whom the institution is designed 
to benefit, and a consideration of the manner in which the 
circumstances of location may facilitate or embarrass the 
operations of the institution itself. 

No one will deny that those parents whose residences 
are so immediately in the vicinity of a college, that their 
sons may be educated without being withdrawn from the 
genial influences of the family circle, enjoy a great advan- 
tage over those who are compelled to send them to a dis- 
tance from home ; more particularly if, in so doing, they 
have no choice but to consign them to the artificial society 
whose uu propitious influence I have endeavored to j^oint 
out, in speaking of the inadequacy of college government 
to supply the place of those restraints which it supersedes. 
In proportion as a college is retired, in the same propor- 
tion is the number of those diminished, to whom this 
great advantage is available. Retirement is therefore pur- 
chased at a large sacrifice, even if we look at the question 
as one which concerns only the morals of the youth it 
affects. For were college government capable of accom- 
plishing all it undertakes — and we have seen how far at 
present this is from being the case — it would ill supply 
the loss of that watchful and anxious solicitude which sur- 
rounds every young man in the bosom of his own home. 
I might, to this consideration, add that of the greatly 
increased exj^ense which attends the education of a son at 



98 LET T K K S ON 

a distance from Lome ; a consideration of so great import- 
ance witli many, as quite to determine the question 
wlietlier lie shall enjoy the benefit of a college education 
or not ; but this is too obvious to require more than an 
incidental mention. 

It is evident that, in a large town, there will usually 
be a considerable number of students residing with their 
parents. It is also as generally true that, owing to the 
denser population of the country in the vicinity of such 
towns, many more will be within such easy distance of 
their homes, that they will be more or less under the con- 
trol of domestic influences. These are not only themselves 
benefited by this cause, but they serve in some degree to 
infuse a better leaven into the whole mass, than can rea- 
sonably be looked for where almost every one is beyond 
even the occasional observation of those who are most 
deeply interested in his welfare, and likely earliest to de- 
tect, when occasion arises, any incipient habits of idleness 
or vice. This consideration strongly recommends popu- 
lous towns as sites for seminaries of learning ; and detracts 
much from the force of the argument, were it not other- 
wise illusory, urged in favor of rural retreats as being 
more favorable to the preservation of good morals among 
young men under education. 

I should do wrong to ignore, as I may seem to do, the 
presumption (continually put forward) in favor of the 
country, that its calm tranquillity predisposes to thought, 
and soothes the mind into a fitting frame for study. With- 
out being in the least disposed to deny that quiet is neces- 
sary to concentration of thought, I repudiate the assump- 



COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. 99 

tion that sucli quiet, to the full extent to which it is 
needed, is not to be found in large cities. If study were a 
pursuit to be prosecuted in the open streets, the argument 
might have a weight, which, in the question of fact before 
us, it lacks. The academic halls of Yale College, New 
Haven, and of Columbia College, New York, possess every 
recommendation of noiseless tranquillity which is to be 
found in those of the University of Alabama ; nor have 
all the thunders of the great Babel of London power to 
penetrate the recesses of the British Museum, or to disturb 
the researches and the meditations of the patient book- 
worms who plod among the treasures of-its vast library. 

Nor need it be said that the uproar which assails the 
ears of the student, as he emerges from his retirement into 
the streets of a great city, creates an unfavorable, or even 
an undesirable, distraction of his thoughts from the sub- 
jects of his studies. It is good that the bow should be 
unbent; and the more complete the recoil, the better. 
The student studies to little purpose, who is studying 
always. The muscle becomes capable of but a languid 
effort which is ever on the strain. Let the hours of relax- 
ation be hours of relaxation in earnest, that in those of 
study the mind may bring to the task all the energies of 
an unexhausted vigor. 

But large towns are preferable, also, to small ones, as 
situations for seminaries of learning, because they place 
these institutions more cons2:)icuously in the view of the 
whole people. At one time or another, almost every citi- 
zen of a State visits its principal city. While there, the 
father of a family will look with especial interest upon the 



100 L E T T E K S ON 

University in wliicli lie designs to educate liis son ; and 
every one, wlietlier lie he drawn toward it by sucli a mo- 
tive or not, will naturally rank it among those objects 
wliicli earliest deserve tbe attention of the stranger. In- 
telligent men from every part of the country become thus 
acquainted with the institution itself, and with the officers 
who conduct it. It occupies a larger place in their 
thoughts than it otherwise would do. They learn to view 
it with a pride proportioned to its celebrity, and it grows 
itself in repute by the operation of the very causes which 
acquaint them with it. Its public exhibitions are also 
attended by larger and more intelligent audiences than 
€an nsually be gathered in the country ; the young men 
who come forward as performers are made conscious that 
they have a more discriminating audience to please, and a 
more honorable name to gain by their successful efforts ; 
ambition is thus stimulated, and higher excellence is the 
natural result. 

But there are still other important advantages to be 
gained by the location of colleges in populous towns. If 
such an institution would be celebrated, its professors 
must have a personal rej^utation as men of letters and sci- 
ence ; and this is what cannot be gained by any ability or 
any success in the routine of elementary instruction. But 
if they would themselves prosecute study, they must have 
access to the collected results of past intellectual labor, in 
the valuable libraries which can only be looked for at 
present in our large towns. In saying this, I do not over- 
look two facts : first, that we have really very few public 
libraries yet in this country of which we have any great 



C O T- L R a E G O V K R N M E N T . 101 

reason to be proud ; and, secondly, that all colleges have, or 
intend to have, libraries of their own. But, in regard to 
the first point, it is certain that our best libraries are, and 
are always likely to be, found in our largest cities ; and as 
to the second, whatever value the libraries of particular 
colleges may have now or hereafter, it is manifestly al)- 
surd to suppose that one in twenty of the whole number 
will, in any length of time, become adequate to the wants 
of a profound scholar or philosopher. No amount of 
talent or industry can ever elevate to the i-ank of authori 
ties men who are deprived of the necessary facilities for 
research. If, therefore, we would give our college officers 
the opportunity (I do not say that all would improve it), 
but if we could give them the opportunity to become 
honorably eminent, we should place them where they may 
have within their reach such means to become so as the 
country affords. 

To these considerations we may add, that, in illustrat- 
ing the laws of nature, it is necessary to employ much 
delicate and costly apparatus. Instruments of great value 
are liable to occasional derangements, the correction of 
which it is not wise or safe to int^rust to rude or inexperi- 
enced hands. It is rare indeed to find, in an obscure 
country town, artisans competent to undertake the repair 
of articles which, even for their ordinary use, require spe- 
cial training and peculiar skill. To send them to a dis- 
tance involves both expense and delay ; to say nothing of 
the hazard of conveyance, often, over ordinary roads, which 
is so great as not seldom to involve a more serious damage 
than that which it was sought to correct. In the large 



102 L E T T E K S <) N 

towns are to be found the manufacturers of this species of 
apparatus ; or at least persons whose occupations are so 
far analogous as to insure in them the possession of a skill 
which may be trusted with comparative safety. This is a 
consideration of great practical importance. In conse- 
quence of trifling accident, I have, in more instances than 
one, known instruments to be set aside and to remain un- 
used for long periods of time ; and in others I have known 
them to be irreparably injured in unskillful hands, or rap- 
idly to deteriorate in consequence of attempts to em- 
ploy them when they were not in proper condition to be 
used. 

After what I have said, it may seem trivial to "mention 
so apparently insignificant a disadvantage of a situation 
remote from the great marts of trade, as the occasional 
failure of text books for ordinary use in college classes 
which, in spite of every precaution, appears to be occa- 
sionally inevitable. Nor would I allude to this, if I had 
not, in many instances, both seen and felt the extreme in- 
convenience resulting from such a failure. And it is with 
reason that I say that no ordinary precaution seems to be 
entirely adequate to prevent the occasional occurrence of 
so untoward a state of things, since I have seen the whole 
business of providing text books taken out of the hands 
of booksellers, and entirely assumed by the college itself, 
without securing any very sensible improvement in this 
respect. In a situation such as are all those to be found 
in the interior of Alabama, the distances from Avhich sup- 
plies of this kind are to be brought, the dangers of the 
seas,^the uncertainty of the rivers, and the irregularities of 



COLLEGE (} rt V E K N M E N t . 103 

land conveyance, conspire in no unfreqnent instances to 
defeat all the arrangements of tlie wisest human foresight, 
and thus to leave, a college for months in a state of great 
embarrassment, from a cause which, at first view, might 
seem the least likely of all to be an occasion of annoy- 
ance. 

For these reasons combined, it is my well-settled belief 
that, in the selection of. a site for a college, the most pop- 
ulous town should be preferred before any location in the 
country, however apparently tempting ; and that no con- 
sideration should be allowed to disturb this preference, 
except that of healthfulness only. And when we con- 
sider that, in the course of human events, it is possible, 
and in this country not very improbable, that a small town 
may become a large one, especially when stimulated in its 
growth by the presence of a great seminary of learning ; 
and that suburbs are likely to be swallowed up and lost 
in the expansion of the towns to w^hich they belong ; it 
will be obvious that the most careful preference originally 
given to seclusion and retirement can at best but secure a 
very temporary enjoyment of the advantages which such 
situations have been idly imagined to possess. 

The design with which I have ventured to undertake 
this series of letters is now answered. I had not in view, 
in writing them, so much to vindicate any existing state 
of things in the University of Alabama, or to urge with 
any strong anticipation of success, any change of such of 
its features as I suppose to be capable of improvement, as 
to correct certain of what seem to me to be errors of pub- 
lic impression or opinion in regard to colleges, some of 



101 LETTERS ON 

them of long standing and of evidently extensive preva- 
lence. In this, if I have not succeeded, I trust I have 
done enough to induce reflection, and. perhaps to elicit 
from abler minds a more thorousfh examination of the 
whole subject. 

R A. P. BARNARD. 

University of Alahaiiia., Aug. 18. 1854. 



459 - 90 



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